The Line 5 Syllabus

The Line 5 Syllabus

This public syllabus started out modestly, as a short syllabus for the Summer course I’m teaching on Literature and Social Engagement. I wanted to teach a course that was rooted in local and regional social concerns and chose to focus, which should come as no surprise to anyone who knows me, on the Line 5 movement. But as I began to pull together that syllabus (which you can see here), it just kept growing and became far too extensive for a short 7 week course.

But I couldn’t let it go. So I took inspiration from the amazing Standing Rock Syllabus, assembled some years ago by a collective of indigenous scholars, and decided to make a public version, which I’m calling “The Line 5 Syllabus.” But it should really be called a Line 5 syllabus, since it is hardly, nor is meant to be, either definitive or exhaustive. In fact, the version here (believe it or not) is itself pared down. Perhaps I’ll yet let it grow and develop. If you have comments or suggestions, I’m happy to receive them.

At any rate, the basic premise here is that it’s one thing to know the facts of the Line 5 matter, but it’s quite another thing to understand its deeper origins and more profound implications. These readings therefore aim to situate Line 5 in a handful of much larger contexts, contexts that often don’t get as much attention as they might (or should) in public debates. Or, to the extent that they do get some attention, they are not always (perhaps of necessity, given the forums in which such debates ordinarily play out) as historically informed or theoretically nuanced as they might otherwise be. I’ve also obviously emphasized a set of questions that I think are especially important. Which is not to say that those issues that do tend to dominate the Line 5 debate– jobs, “energy security,” gas prices and tourism, pipeline safety, engineering standards, and state vs. federal authority, for example– aren’t important. But it is to say that those matters can’t be– our ought not to be– divorced from broader ethico-historical questions involving climate change, indigenous sovereignty, environmental justice, and forms of resistance. I’ve sought to highlight and illuminate those latter questions here, aiming to provoke by drawing upon the insights of scholars from across disciplines (literary studies, history, anthropology, geography, sociology, for instance) as well as from literary artists and others. I think they have much to teach.

But having said that, I should also add that over the past decade or so that I’ve been thinking and writing and reading about and working against that rickety pipeline in the Straits, I’ve learned from many teachers myself: journalists, lawyers, advocates, activists, water protectors, ordinary citizens, and many others, I hope this syllabus, whether you read any of it or not, will be taken as a gesture of solidarity.

A final point: I can imagine some readers who might wonder where the Enbridge perspective is in this syllabus. To that I would only reply that the Enbridge perspective is the very air we breath– both literally and figuratively. For more on this point, see the “Petroculture” section.

Note: this is still a bit of a work in progress. I have linked to as many files as possible. In the coming weeks I’ll try to link to the rest. (If you encounter difficulties, please let me know.)

I. Background: The Great Lakes, the Kalamazoo River, & the Straits

II. The Big Picture: Climate Change, Climate Justice, Settler Colonialism, & Indigenous Sovereignty

Climate Change

Indigenous Sovereignty

III. Petroculture

IV. Crossings: the Border & Infrastructure

V. The Other End of the Line: Sarnia, Detroit, Plastic, Pollution, & Environmental Justice

Sarnia

Detroit

VI. Resistance

Additional Resources: