BSc International Disaster Management and Humanitarian Response and Spanish / Course details

Disaster studies is under fire for being an extension of the colonial project and not recognizing the meta structures that are significantly intertwined with creating and exacerbating disaster risk, such as racial capitalism, white supremacy, epistemic erasure, and settler colonialism, to name a few. Moving away from established frameworks of disaster studies such as the disaster management cycle and the often-deployed language of vulnerability and resilience, the course will introduce students to alternate theoretical frameworks such as those of care, repair, and reparation. Students will engage with a range of critical disaster studies texts (monographs, research articles, memoirs, fiction, blog posts) and visual materials (documentaries, art installations) to sharpen their acumen in analysing and responding to disaster contexts. The transdisciplinary course will expose students to a variety of fields, disciplines, and perspectives that have an important bearing on the study of disasters but do not form the core of disaster studies. This includes perspectives from Black Studies, Indigenous Studies, Subaltern Studies, Postcolonial and Decolonial Theory, Abolition Studies, Affect Theory, and Queer Studies. Together, we will put pressure on taken-for-granted tropes within disaster studies for a world that works for all of us.

The unit aims to:

• Respond to growing calls to decolonise disaster studies, that is make more room for a range of critical perspectives that remain peripheral to the study of disaster
• Understand the lived and felt experiences of those who live through disasters  
• Understand that disasters affect everyone differently
• Understand the diverse ways affected communities recreate their worlds in the aftermath of disasters
• Understand the diverse ways disasters intersect with matters of gender, sexuality, and race
• Understand how disasters and responses to them take place within wider conditions of white supremacy, epistemic erasure, and settler colonialism 

Lectures will centre on introducing students to a range of critical and cutting-edge perspectives relevant to disaster studies. Student participation and engagement will be encouraged through the use of classroom discussions and student-led creative projects. Interactive and creative teaching techniques will be used to highlight key themes and drive student engagement.

Seminars will augment lectures by delving into key course concepts in greater depth. Students are encouraged to develop their own theoretical and applied understanding through required guided reading. 

• Learn cutting edge theories and concepts that have bearing on the study and response to disasters
• Develop understanding of how existing disaster study frameworks don’t adequately encapsulate the lived realities and political contexts of disaster survivors
• Develop alternate frameworks for disaster studies and response

• Critically interrogate academic and non-academic sources on disaster topics
• Understand and apply new theoretical concepts to disaster studies including care, repair, and reparation
• Understand disaster experiences from the margins (e.g. communities living in contexts of settler colonialism, Black and Queer subjects)
• Develop an ability to draw from diverse theoretical frameworks and intellectual positions

• Write a critical essay demonstrating research skills
• Sharpen presentation and public speaking skills
• Learn how to summarise main themes and arguments of a scholarly monograph
• Develop a creative project to communicate a critical issue in disaster studies to a target audience

• Develop sensitivity for the complex issues facing individuals and communities confronted with disasters
• Learn how to question and challenge unjust disaster response interventions
• Learn how to read and engage with a variety of theoretical and intellectual positions
• Learn how to identify power structures and omissions behind conventional disaster discourse
• Develop a creative project to communicate complex ideas to non-academic audiences

Assessment method	Summative or Formative	Weighting within unit
Essay plan	Formative	N/A
Flash Book Review	Summative	25%
Creative Knowledge Translation Project Presentation	Summative	25%
Essay	Summative	50%

Assessment method	Feedback method
Essay plan	In-person during seminars and/or office hours
Flash Book Review	In writing and within 15 working days
Creative Knowledge Translation Project Presentation	In writing and within 15 working days
Essay	In writing and within 15 working days

Aijazi, Omer. Atmospheric violence: Disaster and repair in Kashmir. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2024.

Beckett, Greg. There is no more Haiti: Between life and death in Port-au-Prince. University of California Press, 2019.

Bonilla, Yarimar, and Marisol LeBrón, eds. Aftershocks of disaster: Puerto Rico before and after the storm. Haymarket Books, 2019.

Deraniyagala, Sonali. Wave: A memoir of life after the tsunami. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2013. 

Durban, Erin L. The sexual politics of empire: Postcolonial homophobia in Haiti. University of Illinois Press, 2023. 

Henry, Guibert. To the friend who did not save my life, trans. Linda Coverdale. Quartet, 1991.

 King, Joyce. "Who Dat Say (We)" Too depraved to be saved"?: Re-membering Katrina/Haiti (and beyond): Critical studyin' for human freedom." Harvard Educational Review 81, no. 2 (2011): 343-371. 

Liboiron, Max. Pollution is colonialism. Duke University Press, 2021. 

Lloréns, Hilda. Making livable worlds: Afro-Puerto Rican women building environmental justice. University of Washington Press, 2021. 

Marino, Elizabeth. Fierce climate, sacred ground: An ethnography of climate change in Shishmaref, Alaska. University of Alaska Press, 2015 

Morimoto, Ryo. Nuclear ghost: Atomic livelihoods in Fukushima's gray zone. Univ of California Press, 2023.

Moses, Joshua. Anxious experts: Disaster response and spiritual care from 9/11 to the climate crisis. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2022. 

Really long distance (This American Life podcast) https://www.thisamericanlife.org/597/one-last-thing-before-i-go/act-one

Sheller, Mimi. Island futures: Caribbean survival in the Anthropocene. Duke University Press, 2020.

Takahashi, Satsuki. Fukushima futures: Survival stories in a repeatedly ruined seascape. University of Washington Press, 2023.

Ulysse, Gina Athena. Why Haiti needs new narratives: A post-quake chronicle. Wesleyan University Press, 2015. 

Yusoff, Kathryn. A billion Black anthropocenes or none. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2018.

The course shifts the axis of power in favour of those who remain on the peripheries of disaster studies despite being the most affected by them. Majority texts assigned for the class are by women, BAME, non-European, and Queer authors. The course centres the lived and felt experiences of those in the Global South or those who are structurally disempowered in the Global North.