YORUBA SPIRITUALITY AS AN ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE PARADIGM (HRIR-2300)

Environmental justice pioneer Robert Bullard writes: “Environmental justice advocates continue to challenge the current environmental protection apparatus and offer their own framework for addressing environmental racism, unequal protection, health disparities, and non-sustainable development in the United States –·and around the world.” Acknowledging the impacts of physical and epistemic violence mediated through environmental racism on displaced, previously enslaved, and colonized people, specifically women, in the US will undergird course discussions as students collectively engage Yoruba epistemological and theo-ethical concepts of the Divine through the lens of community, gender, and environment. This course will use the spirituality inherent in Ifa-orisa religion as a theo-ethical framework to conceptualize new forms of justice through the lens of eco-womanism. Eco-womanism is a socio-critical theory, theology, and methodology rooted in earth-based philosophical and practical understandings about God, Black woman, and nature. Eco-womanism challenges the parallel oppressions of Earth and Her most structurally vulnerable inhabitants, Black and Indigenous women, through the use of counter-memory and counter-narrative, among other ways. Eco-womanism highlights the multiple theo-ethical influences within Black and Indigenous women’s spiritual lives as sources of latent power. Course Outcomes Outcome 1: Demonstrate a sound comprehension of epistemology (knowing) and ontology (being) as theo-ethical praxis. Assessment: Regular class attendance and participation. Outcome 2: Demonstrate foundational understanding of the central theo-ethical principles of the Yoruba divinities we will engage in course. Assessment: Students will lead and contribute to partial course discussion daily based on the readings, films, and in-class discussions. Outcome 3: Demonstrate foundational understanding of eco-womanist critique and praxis. Assessment: Students will lead and contribute to partial course discussion daily based on the readings, films, and in-class discussions. Outcome 4: Demonstrate acute awareness of communotheism, ase, egun, iwa pele, and iwa rere and how they function in Yoruba spirituality. Assessment: Final presentations will include a personal epistemic reflection - written or creative - that demonstrates comprehension of Ifa-orisa epistemology through incorporation of one of these principles and how it contributes to an environmental justice paradigm that liberates. This course is a hybrid of on-line/in person seminar format. This course is designed for MA/MTS, DMin, and PhD students. Course meets daily, 1/9/23-1/13/23, from 9:30am - 430pm at GTU Library 3rd Floor Conference Room.