In Fall 2014, Professor Julian Kunnie will teach for the first time RELI 315: Globalization, Indigenous Peoples, Ecocide, and Imprisonment. RELI 315 is both a General Education Diversity Emphasis course and a General Education Tier II Individuals & Societies course. RELI 315 is scheduled for 3:30-6:00pm on Mondays. Dr. Kunnie is the author of a new book, Globalization and Its Impact: The Earth, Ecology, Indigenous Peoples, The Poor, Women, and The Incarcerated.
This course examines the crisis of the destruction of Indigenous peoples’ religions and cultures by the forces of economic globalization and global warming and climate change in various parts of the world, particularly in exacerbating conditions of impoverishment, especially of Indigenous peoples and women, desecration of sacred sites, erosion of religious rights, ecological annihilation, and the intensification of incarceration under the globalization regime. More species of animals, birds, insects, marine life, plants, and trees have become extinct over the past ten years than in the past 65 million years of the Earth, according to the Center for Biological Diversity, threatening our very existence as human beings. The course will center on the manner that globalization has done irreparable harm to the Earth, the ecology, Indigenous peoples’ cultures and lives, and the impoverished, especially women, and the incarcerated. Ethical and moral concerns arising from globalization since such processes have direct impact on the future of all life will be discussed in the concluding segment of the course.