WRDS 150 A 002 Mania Syllabus and Weekly Schedule Summer 2020 PDF

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WRDS 150 Summer Syllabus (May– June 2020)

© Kirby Manià 2020

Art Studies in Research and Writing WRDS 150A 002

ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE Instructor:

Virtual Office Hours:

Dr Kirby Manià

Thursdays 3:15-5:15

Email:

Sign-up for an available slot via Canvas Calendar; alternatively, set up an appointment by email

[email protected]

Venue: Collaborate Ultra “Course Room”

Class venue:

Class times:

Collaborate Ultra

T/Th 12:00-3:00pm (Consult Weekly Schedule for asynchronous and synchronous class plan)

COVID-19 COURSE ADJUSTMENT FOR ONLINE DELIVERY Given the global impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, the University of British Columbia has directed that all UBC programs redesign courses to be delivered online (see “COVID-19 – Status of Summer Terms”, UBC Broadcast, March 25, 2020). As a result, this course has been adjusted for online delivery.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT The Vancouver campus of UBC is located on the traditional, ancestral, unceded territory of the xwməθkwəy"əm (Musqueam) people. The land it is situated on has always been a place of learning for the Musqueam people, who for millennia have passed on their culture, history, and traditions from one generation to the next on this site. I, like many of us, reside in – and will be conducting my teaching activities on – the territories of the Coast Salish peoples, to whom we should also be grateful.

STATEMENT OF INCLUSIVITY I strive to create an environment which is inclusive towards all class members, and that extends to not only welcoming a diversity of perspectives, but also the experiences and backgrounds of the constituent student body. Please advise me which pronouns you would like me to use when referring to you so that you feel comfortable in the classroom space.

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WRDS 150 Summer Syllabus (May– June 2020)

© Kirby Manià 2020

Please let me know if there are any ongoing medical concerns or a documented disability (or impairment) that I need to be cognizant of in my delivery of the course.

GENERAL COURSE DESCRIPTION WRDS 150 is an academic research and communication course. Typically, sections of WRDS 150 are designed around a topic — a concept or issue that has attracted both public interest and scholarly attention. WRDS 150 will introduce you to the ethical knowledge-making practices of scholarly communities, such as particular academic disciplines and research fields. You will begin to participate in scholarly conversations within those communities by performing the actions of apprentice academic researchers, scholarly communicators, and peer-reviewers. You will also produce work in several scholarly genres and familiarize yourself with the conventions of communication of specific academic disciplines. In doing so, you will begin to develop your own scholarly identity as a member of academic research communities. This course fulfills the writing component of the Faculty of Arts Writing and Research Requirement. No LPI (Language Proficiency Index) is required.

SPECIFIC COURSE DESCRIPTION: ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE This course focuses on scholarly discourse published on the topic of environmental justice. It will consider discursive perspectives from critical race theory, ecofeminism, social movement theory, media studies, geography, sociology, political ecology, and economics. Emerging as a movement in the early 1980s in the United States, environmental justice – now considered a global movement and a matter of global concern – recognizes the “unequal impacts of environmental pollution on different social classes and racial/ethnic groups” (Mohai et al., 2009, p.405). Studies have shown that environmental harms disproportionately affect vulnerable social groups (such as people of colour, indigenous peoples, immigrants, women, minority groups, and low-income communities). Environmental justice (EJ) scholars research and monitor cases of socially produced environmental injustice and critically evaluate how multi-scalar policy decisions (such as neoliberal reform) continue to affect at-risk communities. EJ scholarship examines the social mobilization potential of communities against the uneven distribution of environmental hazards, and also considers how grassroots activists – in their campaign for greater recognition and participation in decision-making processes – hold governments and corporations accountable in their struggle for environmental justice. We will be tracing a number of scholarly conversations around the globalization of the Environmental Justice Movement (EJM) – looking at literature from the US, Canada, and other parts of the world – whilst discussing terms like environmental racism, intersectionality, slow violence, ecological debt, degrowth, food sovereignty, hydric justice, and environmentalism of the poor. The course’s discursive approach invites students to engage with scholarly conversations and published research across a range of disciplinary perspectives. The course will entail writing about these research perspectives as well as producing research of your own.

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WRDS 150 Summer Syllabus (May– June 2020)

© Kirby Manià 2020

LEARNING OBJECTIVES Working with scholarly sources to read and interpret academic discourse in context 1. You will work with scholarly articles to recognize how the conventions of communication within academic disciplines, including forms of argumentation and what counts as evidence, reflect and shape the types of knowledge associated with research cultures in the university. This will be done by: a. Reading, summarizing, comparing, and critically evaluating scholarly articles, retaining the key arguments/findings and emphases of the originals. b. Recognizing forms of argumentation and identifying the rhetorical moves made by members of specific academic research disciplines, such as practices of positioning, definition, attribution, hedging, and assertion. c. Recognizing the goals, methods, and citation practices of specific academic research disciplines. Engaging in apprentice scholarly research 2. You will participate as apprentice members of academic research communities by identifying and tracing the scholarly conversation around a research problem and by developing questions, collecting evidence, and constructing arguments through ethical and collaborative practices of scholarship. This will be done by: a. Developing a research project that addresses a gap in knowledge within a particular research community, and which implements relevant discursive features and rhetorical moves in a variety of genres, including a research proposal and working bibliography, a presentation, and a final paper. b. Gathering relevant and credible primary and secondary sources, using appropriate tools and methods, including UBC Library resources. c. Engaging responsibly with and within research communities, using appropriate citation practices that meet the expectations of academic integrity and adhering to ethical standards of data collection with research collaborators. d. Engaging in constructive and collaborative practices of knowledge production, including performing peer review and integrating feedback. NOTE: Teaching grammar is not the purpose of WRDS 150. UBC has various language and writing resources to help students in these areas, including the Centre for Writing and Scholarly Communication and the Chapman Learning Commons.

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WRDS 150 Summer Syllabus (May– June 2020)

© Kirby Manià 2020

ASSIGNMENTS AND ASSESSMENTS Please note that there is no final exam for this course. Instead, the course adopts a scaffolded approach to assessment. Detailed assignment guidelines (called “assignment briefs”) and rubrics will be posted to Canvas. You are responsible for understanding each assignment’s requirements. If you do not understand the requirements, then please ask me for clarification in class, after class, by email, or during my office hours. During my office hours, I am also happy to listen to your preliminary ideas and offer verbal feedback on your drafts. Please note that I do not review drafts via email.

COURSE EVALUATION Assessment Type

Weighting

Deadline

Three Short Summaries & Tree Diagram

15%

Weeks 1-3

Literature Review

10%

Week 3 (May 29)

Genre Features Quiz & Discourse Analysis Research Proposal

10%

Week 4 (June 2)

15%

Week 4 (June 5)

Oral Presentation

10%

Week 5 (June 11)

Research Paper

30%

Week 6: Submit & peerreview draft Research Paper

Attendance

3%

Upload final document to Canvas on June 22 Ongoing

7%

Ongoing

Attendance of Collaborate Ultra sessions will be recorded. A numerical value will be calculated out of all synchronous classes convened to arrive at your grade for this component. You will be granted an absence allowance of 2 classes.

Participation will include assessment of: -

-

-

Syllabus quiz and Library Skills Modules quizzes Participation in Collaborate Ultra discussions and group work Canvas activities: low-stakes written responses and discussions Peer-reviews of short summaries & assignment drafts Research paper activities: rough outline, body paragraph, conclusion preparation and reverse outline Peer-review self-reflection Canvas Course Analytics participation score

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WRDS 150 Summer Syllabus (May– June 2020)

© Kirby Manià 2020

ASSIGNMENT DESCRIPTIONS Below you will find short descriptions of WRDS 150 course assignments. Please refer to the weekly schedule for each assignment’s due date. All assignments will be described in more detail as we progress through the course material. All assignments must adopt the APA citation style. Summaries In class, you will learn several strategies to help you summarize scholarly texts and bring them into conversation with one another. You will be developing and practising these strategies to demonstrate your ability to work with scholarly texts in ways that scholars do. These skills will be practiced on a weekly basis as you read each week’s assigned reading and peer review each other’s writing. i.

Short weekly summaries

You will complete two +-200-word summaries for two of the course’s assigned peerreviewed articles. Please post these summaries on Canvas in the space provided. Each week’s reading and summary must be completed by the stipulated deadline posted on Canvas. (Each of the accompanying peer-reviews of these summaries will be taken into consideration as part of the participation component for the course.)

ii.

Summary & Tree Diagram

This 300-word summary will provide you with an additional opportunity to practice conveying the gist of a passage from an academic article. This summary must use a highlevel opening frame that introduces your reader to the paper’s main abstractions (and highlevel concepts); it must also adopt appropriate reporting expressions and citations, and select a mix of high and low levels of generality. You will also be required to provide a tree diagram to show how you tracked the passage’s reasoning.

Literature Review You will be required to write a 350-word literature review that orchestrates a high-level scholarly conversation between three course readings. Your orchestration will need to map out a state of knowledge on the topic of environmental justice, indicating how the speakers define and engage with EJ differently (in other words, you will account for how the three articles respectively engage with/apply the concept of environmental justice). Your orchestration must make it clear, through the use of reporting expressions, who is speaking. It must also account for the genres of the articles being orchestrated. Genre Features Quiz & Discourse Analysis On Canvas you will be provided with an unseen source and asked to analyse the passage by identifying and discussing the genre features used in the source (e.g. citation and reporting expressions, use of abstractions, discourse actions, modality, forecasts, etc.).

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WRDS 150 Summer Syllabus (May– June 2020)

© Kirby Manià 2020

Research Proposal, Oral Presentation, and Research Paper This set of assignments invites you to participate, as novices, in the sort of research and writing that scholars do. For the Research Proposal, you will choose a research topic (one related to environmental justice), identify a gap in the research that has been conducted on this topic, and design a research project that attempts to address this gap. The research proposal takes the form of a 300-word paragraph that “pitches” an idea for a research project. You will need to produce a passable proposal in order to be able to proceed to the next two stages of the research process. For the Oral Presentation, you will share the key components of your research project (e.g. your research question, research site, your methods, and findings) with the class. For the Research Paper, you will write a 1500-1800-word paper that will contextualize your study in relation to others’ studies on the same topic, describe your own study (what you examined and how you examined it) and share, with your readers, your findings (through evidence supplied from primary sources that explains these findings or claims). In your research paper, you will also speculate about the significance of your findings or claims, the limitations of your research and, from these limitations, possibilities for future research.

REQUIRED TEXTS Recommended Book:

Giltrow, J., Gooding, R., Burgoyne, D. & Sawatsky, M. (2014). Academic Writing: An Introduction (3rd ed.) Peterborough: Broadview.

Scholarly Articles:

All articles detailed below can be located through the UBC Library’s online. Links to the articles can also be located via LOCR (Library Online Course Reserves) on your WRDS 150 Canvas worksite

Review Article 1. Introductory Reading Mohai, P., Pellow, D. & Timmons Roberts, J. (2009). Environmental Justice. Annual Review of Environment and Resources, 34, 405–30, DOI: 10.1146/annurevenviron-082508-094348.

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WRDS 150 Summer Syllabus (May– June 2020)

© Kirby Manià 2020

Research Articles 2. Geography/Urban Studies Debbane!, A., & Keil, R. (2004). Multiple Disconnections: Environmental Justice and Urban Water in Canada and South Africa. Space and Polity, 8(2), 209-225, DOI: 10.1080/1356257042000273968. 3. Sociology Robinson, J.L., Tindall, D.B., Seldat, E. & Pechlaner, G. (2007). Support for First Nations’ Land Claims amongst Members of the Wilderness Preservation Movement: The Potential for an Environmental Justice Movement in British Columbia. Local Environment, 12(6), 579-598, DOI: 10.1080/13549830701657307. 4. Media Studies/Sociology Stoddart, M.C.J. (2007). ‘British Columbia is Open for Business’: Environmental Justice and Working Forest News in the Vancouver Sun. Local Environment, 12(6), 663-674, DOI: 10.1080/13549830701664113 5. Governance/Economics Mascarenhas, M. (2007). Where the Waters Divide: First Nations, Tainted Water and Environmental Justice in Canada. Local Environment, 12(6), 565-577, DOI: 10.1080/13549830701657265

SUPPLEMENTAL READINGS AND RESOURCES You might find these additional readings helpful in providing you with more context and history about the environmental justice movement. Haluza-Delay, R. (2007). Environmental Justice in Canada. Local Environment, 12(6), 557-564, DOI: 10.1080/13549830701657323, Holifield, R. (2001). Defining Environmental Justice and Environmental Racism. Urban Geography, 22(1), 78-90, DOI: 10.2747/0272-3638.22.1.78. Martinez-Alier, J., Temper, L., Del Bene, D. & Scheidel, A. (2016). Is there a global environmental justice movement? The Journal of Peasant Studies, 43(3), 731-755, DOI: 10.1080/03066150.2016.1141198. [Consult pp.740-742.] Merchant, C. (2003). Shades of Darkness: Race and Environmental History. Environmental History, 8(3) 2003, 380-394, DOI: 10.2307/3986200. Nixon, R. (2006-2007). Slow Violence and Environmentalism of the Poor.” Journal of Commonwealth and Postcolonial Studies, 13(2) – 14(1), 14-37.

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WRDS 150 Summer Syllabus (May– June 2020)

© Kirby Manià 2020

Taylor, D.E. (1997). American Environmentalism: The Role of Race, Class and Gender in Shaping Activism 1820-1995. Race, Gender & Class, 5(1), 16-62.

CITATION STYLE You will need to learn and adopt the APA citation style for this course. Please consult the Purdue OWL APA webpage for guidelines on how to follow the APA style correctly: https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/apa_style/apa_formatting_and_style_gui de/general_format.html.

UNIVERSITY POLICIES UBC provides resources to support student learning and to maintain healthy lifestyles but recognizes that sometimes crises arise and so there are additional resources to access including those for survivors of sexual violence. UBC values respect for the person and ideas of all members of the academic community. Harassment and discrimination are not tolerated nor is suppression of academic freedom. UBC provides appropriate accommodation for students with disabilities and for religious observances. UBC values academic honesty and students are expected to acknowledge the ideas generated by others and to uphold the highest academic standards in all of their actions. Details of the policies and how to access support are available on the UBC Senate website (https://senate.ubc.ca/policies-resources-support-student-success).

COURSE POLICIES COMMUNICATION Brief, procedural questions can be answered by checking Canvas and your syllabus first, and by emailing me second. If you wish to discuss course content and/or your written work in detail, please visit me during my office hours or email me to set up an appointment. Email You can normally expect to receive an email response within 24 hours. Please note that emails sent outside office hours (8am-5pm), will be read the next business day. I will respond to emails sent over the weekend on Monday. When emailing, please give your email a clear and specific subject line starting with WRDS 150 and your specific section number. Please keep the tone and style of emails consistent with the genre of this type of professional correspondence.

ATTENDANCE Attendance records will be kept for each Collaborate Ultra session and attendance of these sessions will count towards your Attendance grade. Please ensure that you are on time for our online classes. Regular attendance is the most crucial factor determining success in this course. If you fail to be intellectually present or leave early (without prior notification), your attendance of the session can be nullified.

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WRDS 150 Summer Syllabus (May– June 2020)

© Kirby Manià 2020

Collaborate Ultra Netiquette 1. When you join a Collaborate Ultra session (i.e., online class), please ensure that you turn off your microphone and camera. These icons can be located at the bottom centre of your Collaborate Ultra screen. 2. If you have a comment for everyone, type it in the chat window. (If you have a question for me – that is not relevant to your peers – you can click on the backward arrow next to “Everyone” at the top of the chat box and then type in my name and a dedicated, private chat window will open.) 3. “Raise” your hand if you have a question: to do this, you will need to click on the icon of a figure with the raised hand at the bottom centre of your screen. When I call your name, please turn on your microphone (and camera, if you wish). 4. If you fi...