I  signed up for this course  because I am passionate about the material. I was honestly content with just learning about Black ecology in my free time and through my research, and it was a happy surprise to find this listed in Emory’s course atlas. For the past year I have been absolutely fascinated by the topic, a result of my appreciation of nature, my political orientation towards abolition and anarchism, and my prior exposure to agrarianism through family stories and African American literature. I am excited to learn more about the revolutionary history and potential of Black ecology. I want to gain a solid understanding and working knowledge of Black land practices and their spiritual and cultural ties, through both historical examples and analysis of contemporary environmentalist groups and movements. I am most concerned with situating these traditions within the project of abolition, as I see environmentalism as instrumental to it. 

My current research project, both within and outside this course, is all about the radical potential of Black ecology, as imagined by and through Octavia Butler. At some point after finishing what is now (along with its sequel) my favorite book, Parable of the Sower, I told myself: “There’s got to be a real life Earthseed community.” A few Google searches later and I found a couple, including Tierra Negra Farm, heart and home of the Earthseed Land Collective, a co-op in Durham that works to provide food and community for local queer BIPOC. I had the privilege of working and living alongside them for about a week and a half this past summer, thanks to the research stipend I received from the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship. I will be putting my experiences at Tierra Negra Farm and my knowledge of Black ecology in conversation with Butler. In doing so, I hope to uncover ways in which Black art, and afrofuturist literature in particular, can help us imagine and embody a liberatory relationship with our natural environments.