ENVR 141 - Wilderness & HumanValue Worksh - Siapno [WI25]

ENVR 140 – Wilderness and Human Values – Siapno, Winter 2025

Instructor: Dr. Jacqueline Siapno (Joy)

Email: jsiapno@ucsd.edu

Websites:

https://environmentalstudies.ucsd.edu/people/core-lecturers

https://ucsd.academia.edu/JacquelineSiapno

 

Class: Tuesdays only, 1.5 hours. 12:30pm-1:50pm.

 

Office hours:

Teaching Assistants:

1. Soraya Bernal

2. Nathaniel de Guzman

3. Matthew Le

4. Emily Parviz

Course Description

Welcome to the Wilderness and Human Values, ENVR 141!

This course/workshop is an exploration of the concept and history of “wilderness” and its relationship to humans. It is a workshop to prepare students who may wish to be a Teaching Assistant for ENVR 140.

 

For this specific class, at this particular moment in time, we will be focusing on pedagogy and teaching about environmental justice and social movements (please see Modules for the Readings). Our first reading in Module 1 is on what it means to be climate-centered rather than threat-centered, to focus on climate security rather than just national security; to envision multispecies justice rather than just human security.

We will begin by asking what “wild” and “wilderness” mean in different historical and comparative contexts globally, and amongst different kinds of “humans” globally. Grounding ourselves in Indigenous belief systems and practices in different parts of the world, where for some, “wilderness” is “home”, we will examine the entrenchment of imperialism and settler colonialism, “discoveries” of places, de-colonization, ecocide, genocide, and the counter-narrative histories and rise of movements for environmental and climate justice in the global South. These themes will be introduced through primary sources, works of fiction, scholarly articles, and praxis (practice & theory), hiking, being wilderness.

Land Acknowledgement

For millennia, the Kumeyaay (Kumiai) people have been part of this land. UC San Diego is built on the un-ceded territory of the Kumeyaay Nation.  Today, the Kumeyaay people continue to maintain their political sovereignty and cultural traditions as vital members of the San Diego community.  We acknowledge their tremendous contributions to our region and thank them for their stewardship. 

Student Learning Goals & Course Objectives:

1. Experience being nature, through praxis (hiking, camping, foraging, trip to the zoo, wilderness areas, ocean as method -- all voluntary and in your own time) and creating positive Writing Environments;
2. Analyze the history of the concept of “wilderness”, “conservation” and their relationship to indigeneity and environmental justice;
3. Produce learner-centered, climate-centered creative strategies for de-colonization and building inter-personal friendships and communities for a global climate justice movement.

Learning Outcomes: After completing this course, you should be able:

To think globally, act locally and become visionary global citizens; identify, understand, and explain the main historical and theoretical debates on the concepts of “wild”, “wilderness”, “conservation”, and environmental and climate justice; produce creative strategies on international cooperation without domination, survival of the kindest (not the fittest), and build connections to specific local and global communities working on environmental justice programs; examine how we can learn from history in order NOT to repeat the same mistakes; and en-gender hope, strength, and inspiration; and contribute towards innovative, creative, learner-centered/student-centered repertoire of pedagogies of hope and possibilities for the kind of more beautiful, sustainable global futures you’d like to see for ourselves, our communities, and our planet.

Required Readings: Readings are available as pdfs on Canvas and On Reserve at the UCSD library. Take time to get to know the librarians and libraries really well. When you have known items you cannot find with UCSD holdings, it’s best to use the Ask a Librarian from this pagehttps://ucsd.libanswers.com/  or from the Library guides pagehttps://ucsd.libguides.com/ . or from UC Library Search chat button. Or email us directly at ask-us@ucsd.libanswers.com You can also do Inter-library loan from the other 9 campuses within the UC system.

Course Requirements and Assignments:

Attendance and Participation in class: 30% of grade. If you can't come to class, please let me know in advance; you are only allowed 3 excused absences.

Reading Response Notes, Weekly: 30% of grade. Submit at the beginning of each week, by Monday evening, 11:59pm. If you don’t read the readings on time, there will be a penalty/reduction for late submission. No deadline extensions unless you submit a formal accommodation request.

Essay, Nature Writing, Writing Environments: 5 pages, double-spaced. What does wild and wilderness mean to you? 20 % of grade. Voluntary hiking and being in wilderness.

Oral Presentations: sign-up by Week 5, under Discussions on Canvas. This is your Final: Oral Exam. Last 2 weeks of classes. 20% of grade.

Accommodations. Students with Special Needs. Varied learners. Students with special needs may request appropriate academic accommodations. Students are advised to email or talk to the Course Instructor as soon as possible so that the appropriate arrangements can be made. See also: https://osd.ucsd.edu/students/registering.html

https://osd.ucsd.edu/students/general-differences-between-k12-and-university.html

Support systems. If you require additional support with academic writing, library assistance, research skills, and other issues, you may want refer to the UCSD campus website for further information on the wide range of academic supports available for students on campus. You can also come to my office hours or make an appointment.

How to write: see pdf on Canvas “Who is your audience?”. See also Writing Support: https://writinghub.ucsd.edu/for-undergrads/index.html

A short guide to Community Based Participatory Action Research: https://hc-v6-static.s3.amazonaws.com/media/resources/tmp/cbpar.pd

Covid-19 and UC Strike Reset: our highest priority in our class is social and emotional learning. If you have non-emergency physical or mental health concerns, please contact the following student support systems: Covid-19 guidelines: https://returntolearn.ucsd.edu/campus- guidelines/testing-and-screening/student-screening-and-testing/index.html

Student Health Services: https://studenthealth.ucsd.edu; Counseling and Psychological
Services: https://caps.ucsd.edu

Emergency Preparedness:https://blink.ucsd.edu/safety/emergencies/preparedness

Week 1: 

Introduction. Being nature (hiking, camping, foraging, trips to wilderness). Writing Environments: keep a journal for the entire quarter.

Schedule and organize a hiking trip, camping, trip to the the UCSD Nature Reserves, trails, wilderness, foraging, the zoo. These activities are voluntary. See some possibilities below. Brainstorm. Write about it.

En-vision, imagine, design, and plan on how, where, and when you want to be in or be wilderness. Make a schedule, hike, camp, and write a journal about the experience. Optional. Voluntary. If you do go, please sign the liability waiver form: 

https://blink.ucsd.edu/_files/safety-tab/risk/general-waiver.pdf

Readings:

Zakaria, The Camphor and the Elephant 

Mawson, Incomplete Conquests

Jacobin, The Good Die Young (on Henry Kissinger)

Dina Gilio-Whitaker, 2020.  “The Problem With Wilderness”. https://www.uuworld.org/articles/problem-wilderness

The Word for Woman is Wilderness: https://www.literature.green/en/feminizing-wilderness-writing-in-the-anthropocene/

Wilderness, Nature Writing: https://www.eou.edu/mfa/wilderness-writing-concentration-overview/

Foraging: https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2021/09/09/173838801/meet-alexis-nikole-nelson-the-wildly-popular-black-forager

Dispossessing the Wilderness: Indian Removal (see three Chapter pdfs on Canvas).

Christopher J. Keller, 2005. “Of Gardens and Classrooms, Plants and Discourse,” in Writing Environments.

Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, 2022. The Best American Nature & Science Writing 2022 (See Modules, Canvas for pdfs).

Possibilities for places to go exploring/hiking:

Scripps Coastal Reserve: hiking trip: https://nrs.ucsd.edu/reserves/scripps/index.html

UC San Diego Natural Reserve Systems. Schedule and RESERVE your visit at this website: https://rams.ucnrs.org/

Mission Trail/s: 1 Junipero Serra: https://mtrp.org/

Pine Creek Wilderness: https://www.fs.usda.gov/detailfull/cleveland/specialplaces/?cid=stelprdb5286397&width=full

Global (for Summer; or Virtual):

Indonesia: https://indonesia.wcs.org/Wild-Places.aspx

Gunung Leuser, Sumatra:

https://en.unesco.org/biosphere/aspac/gunung-leuser

https://globalconservation.org/projects/leuser-national-park-indonesia/

Read and research on: The Coral Triangle (in Southeast Asia) and Marine Biodiversity:

https://oceanconservancy.org/blog/2022/08/25/coral-triangle

https://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/okeanos/explorations/10index/background/biodiversity/biodiversi ty.html

 

Week 2: 

Environmental History, Intersectional Environmentalism. De-colonizing “wilderness”. De-wilding and re-wilding.

What if wilderness is home? Who “discovered” whom?

How is wilderness articulated in other languages? For example: orang hutan (Malay; Bahasa Indonesia); ai laran (Tetun) - what do they mean and how are these concepts different from the English term?

History, theories, and global perspectives on “conservation”.

Required Readings:

John Muir, Wilderness Essays (see Modules, Canvas for pdf).

The myth of a wilderness without humans: https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/the-myth-of-a-wilderness-without-humans/

Ferdinand Malcom, 2022. Decolonial Ecology: Thinking from the Carribean World, Polity Press, 2022.

Muir College, Land Acknowledgement: https://muir.ucsd.edu/about/MuirandtheEnvironment/land-acknowledgment.html

Critical debates about John Muir:

https://muir.ucsd.edu/about/MuirandtheEnvironment/index.html#Critical-Debates-About-John-Mui

The Miseducation of John Muir:

https://longreads.com/2016/07/26/the-miseducation-of-john-muir/

What makes us human: on de-wilding and re-wilding:

https://aboutplacejournal.org/article/what-makes-us-human/

 

Week 3: 

On Human zoos, “Wild women”, “wild peoples”, “outsiders”, Aswang (women half-human, half-wild animal), Mermaids, "jungles" in Southeast Asia

Mulaika Hijjas, “The English Tiger,” in Petals of Hibiscus, e. M. Quayum, Petaling Jaya: Pearson Malaysia, 2003.

Living Side by Side with Tigers: https://indonesia.wcs.org/News-Room/Events-Announcements/ID/14635/KOMPETISI-ILUSTRASI-LIVING-SIDE-BY-SIDE-WITH-TIGER.aspx

Human zoos and exhibits. https://ca.pbslearningmedia.org/resource/1904-worlds-fair-exhibition-of-the-igorot-people/asian-americans/

https://archive.advancingjustice-la.org/what-we-do/curriculum-lesson-plans/asian-americans-k-12-education-curriculum/episode-1-lesson-1-1904

Mark Dowie, Conservation Refugees: The Hundred-Year Conflict Between Global Conservation and Native Peoples. MIT Press, 2011.

Nick Joaquin, “The Summer Solstice”, in Tropical Gothic, University of Queensland Press, 1972.

James Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia, Yale University Press, 2010. Read the following Chapters: Introduction; State Space; Orality

Benedict Anderson, “An Outsider’s View of Thai Politics”: https://prachatai.com/english/node/2694

Barbara Humberstone, “Becoming a ‘mermaid’: Bodies and technologies : myth, reality, embodiment, cyborgs, windsurfing and the sea,” in Living with the Sea, Routledge, 2018.

Trance and Dance in Bali, documentary film, on “wild women”; also Aswang, film.

Week 4: 

Environmental and Climate Justice. Environmental Racism.

Global Indigenous Peoples’ Movements.

Iha ailaran (in the jungles); guerrillas in the jungles. Mapping and Counter-mapping.

Required Readings:

Chad Brown, “Racial Injustice Pervades our Wilderness”: https://columbiainsight.org/racial-injustice-pervades-our-wilderness-a-change-of-heart-is-needed/

Greta Gaard, "Feminism and Environmental Justice," The Routledge Handbook of Environmental Justice, Routledge, 2017.

Beyond Extractivism: A Material Transition, War on Want: https://waronwant.org/sites/default/files/2021-03/A%20Material%20Transition_report_War%20on%20Want.pdf

Sexy Killers: oil and big coal: https://news.mongabay.com/2019/04/in-sexy-killers-journos-probe-indonesian-candidates-ties-to-big-coal/

Rise of Electric Cars Threatens Philippine Forests, PCIJ: https://pcij.org/article/7649/rise-of-electric-cars-threatens-philippine-forests

Do research on the recent COP 27 (Egypt) and COP 15 (Montreal); United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP); Early Warning Systems.

Climate Controversies in Southeast Asia, organized by Stiftung Asienhaus in
Germany: https://www.asienhaus.de/aktuelles/climate-controversies-in-southeast-asia- weekly-digital-lecture-series

Decolonising Gender and Climate Change, organized by University of Leeds: https://climate.leeds.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Decolonising-Gender-and-CCC- final.pdf

 

Essay on Nature Writing is due.

 Who is your audience/reader?

What do you want your audience/reader to know about and understand?

What is the question/problem you want to answer/understand?

What is the story you are trying to tell? What is the narrative and counter-narrative?

What has already been written (literature review) about this topic/problem/story?

 

See nature writing examples from Week 1.

 

Week 5:

Indigenous Belief Systems and Practices of Conservation. Environmental History.

Tarabandu. Indigenous practices of conservation. Timor Leste/East Timor. https://news.mongabay.com/2018/10/timor-leste-maubere-tribes-revive-customary-law-to-protect-the-ocean/

Benjamin Madley, An American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe, 1846-1873, Yale University Press, 2017.

William Skeat, Malay Magic: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/47873/47873-h/47873-h.htm

Claire Holt, Chapter 4: "The Dance," in Art in Indonesia: Continuities and Change, Cornell University Press, 1967.

Kecak, Monkey dance, Bali:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViKT5gPoZW8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCUdEnGvYFk

“Climate Imperialism in the 21^st Century”: https://monthlyreview.org/2022/07/01/climate-imperialism-in-the-twenty-first-century/

During Week 5: Sign-up for Oral Group Presentations (see Discussions).

Week 6: 

Being Wilderness.

Ocean as Method (see readings).

Ruy Cinatti, Motivos Artisticos Timorenses e a Sua Integracao. Lisboa, Instituto de Investigacao Cientifica Tropical, Museu de  Etnologia, 1987.

Roxana Waterson, The Living House.

Multi-species justice

Animal Legal Defense Fund, Rights of Nature: https://aldf.org/article/ecuadors-constitutional-court-rules-wild-animals-are-subjects-of-legal-rights-under-the-rights-of-nature/

“Borders of Care: Ethnography with the Monarch Butterfly”: https://americanethnologist.org/features/reflections/borders-of-care-ethnography-with-the-monarch-butterfly

Katharina Fackler & Silvia Schultermandl, “Kinship as critical idiom in Oceanic Studies,” in, Atlantic Studies, Routledge, 2022. (pdf, Canvas)

The more-than-human politics of cities: Multi-species policy futures and nature-based solutions: https://gssc.uni-koeln.de/en/veranstaltungen/public-lecture/pl-22-4-27-maller-afas

My grandmother/grandfather crocodile (Avo lafaek, Timor Leste/East Timor): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5cxxCPaRIrA

 

Week 7: 

Wilderness and Conflicts over Natural Resources

Film, El Territorio and other films; create your own short films. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Territory_(2022_film)

San Diego Environmental Film Festival: https://sdeff.org

Rainforest Action Network, Publications. Choose your readings: https://www.ran.org/publications/

Global Indigenous Peoples’ Movements; Alianza Global de Comunidades Territoriales:

https://www.instagram.com/globalalliancet/

The Global Indigenous Movement to Fight Climate Chante, NY Times:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/01/opinion/climate-change-indigenous-activists.html

Ocean as Method

Elizabeth Deloughrey, “Toward a Critical Ocean Studies for the Anthropocene,” English Language Notes, Volume 57, Number 1, Duke University Press, 2019.

Chris Armstrong, Blue New Deal: Why we Need a New Politics of the Ocean. Read Intro: A Blue New Deal; Sea Level Rise; The Rights of Marine Animals (on Canvas, Module 8).

https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300270402/a-blue-new-deal/

Dilip Menon:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JHzYYKI0MQ

 

Week 8

Oral  Presentations Begin.

Dilip Menon, Nishat Zaidi, Malhotra Simi, Saarah Jappie, “Ocean Histories: From the Terrestrial to the Maritime,”Ocean as Method: Thinking with the Maritime, Taylor and Francis, 2022 (read an excerpt, not entire book): https://www.foyles.co.uk/witem/history-politics/ocean-as-method-thinking-with-the,dilip-m-menon-nishat-zaidi-simi-malhotra-saarah-jappie-9781032246772

Markus Rediker: Against Terracentrism: Oceans as Sites of Struggle in History; Maritime Radicalism: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TkVpjVXVvE

Week 9: 

Learner-centered activities. Student Oral Presentation = your Final Exam is Oral. Peer evaluations (active listening and constructive evaluating for those who are not presenting). Sign-up on Week 5 in Canvas, under Discussions for your thematic topics.

Week 10:

Last week of classes.

Oral Presentations and Concluding remarks.

Additional Resources on Environmental and Climate Justice:

All readings will be on Canvas under each week’s Module and also under Files.

United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP): Multi-hazard early warning systems: https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/press-release/major-new-project-enhance-early-warning-systems-increased-climate

Gender Action Plan, Green Climate Fund: https://www.greenclimate.fund/sites/default/files/document/fp171-gender-action-plan.pdf

Gender, Global Environment Fund: https://www.thegef.org/what-we-do/topics/gender

Rainforest Action Network, Indigenous Communities are Forest Defenders: https://www.ran.org/issue/frontline-and-indigenous-communities-forest-defenders/

Our Children's Trust: https://www.ourchildrenstrust.org/

Greenpeace: https://www.greenpeace.org/southeastasia/press/58630/west-papuan-indigenous-defender-files-lawsuit-over-palm-oil-company-forestland-grab/

 

Additional resources, films, materials will be shared throughout the course, work-in-progress as new updates come up.