SOCY 143 Black Botanical Medicine in the Americas

How have plants been part of Black-led community health and healing in the Americas? How has this botanical knowledge been central to material and discursive geographies of blackness; to how blackness is lived; and to how blackness is constructed in health narratives, policy, and movements? In addition to learning about Black botanical knowledge in North and Latin America (African-American and Afro-Latinx), students analyze their own social locations; interrogate assumptions about local and traditional plant knowledge; and encounter broad understandings of health that include environmental, economic, and spiritual dimensions. Students engage with academic texts, news stories, art, and creative writing.