Teaching Urban Ecology: Environmental Studies and the Pedagogy of Intersectionality

by Giovanna Di Chiro

Despite the recognition by early champions of the environmental movement in the United States that humans and the diverse ecosystems in which they live are indivisible, many environmental education policies and programs have tended to uphold the categorical distinction between "nature" and "culture" (e.g., Sessions; Soul³ and Press). Although by the late 1960s Rachel Carson's Silent Spring had introduced a worldwide audience to the concept of "ecological interdependence," conceptualizing humans as part of rather than distinct from nature, with few exceptions much of the curriculum comprising the field of environmental studies has uncritically inherited this Western philosophical nature/culture dualism (Hazlett, Orr). Offering courses that partition the study of "nature" (geology, ecology, environmental chemistry) from critical analyses of the "social" world (policy, law, culture and values, environmental economics), many environmental studies programs leave it to the individual student to do the work of imagining the interdisciplinary connections. In recent years, feminist and environmental justice scholars and activists have raised awareness of the dangers inherent in uncritically assuming these "oppressive dichotomies" (Brown and Jordanova) and offer alternative pedagogical practices for environmental education (Stein, Figueroa, Cheng-Levine, Di Chiro, "Applying"). In this essay, I discuss how I use the feminist concept of intersectionality when teaching Urban Ecology, an environmental studies course that strives to put into practice environmental justice activists' emphasis on the interdependence of human health, ecological integrity, and social justice.