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

• • Bonnie Jo Campbell, Once Upon a River. Norton, 2012.
  • Inside Climate News, The Dilbit Disaster
  • National Transportation Safety Board, “Enbridge Incorporated Hazardous Liquid Pipeline Rupture and Release Marshall, Michigan July 25, 2010,” 2012.
  • J.R. McNeil and Peter Engelke, “Introduction,” The Great Acceleration: An Environmental History of the Anthropocene Since 1945. Harvard UP, 2016.
  • Jeff Alexander and Beth Wallace, “Sunken Hazard: Aging Oil Pipelines Beneath the Straits of Mackinac an Ever-present Threat to the Great Lakes,” National Wildlife Federation, 2012.
  • Gretchen Whitmer, Notice of revocation and Termination of Easement
  • Nessel v Enbridge
  • Mary Annette Pember, “Enbridge Takes the Gloves Off in Line 5 Battle,” Indian Country, May, 2022.
  • Bad River Band of the Lake Superior Tribe v. Enbridge Energy Co.
  • Erik Ness, “‘We’re in Our Forever Home‘,” Isthmus, May 2023.
  • Jeffrey Insko, “Line 5: Dismantling as World-Building,” Energy Humanities, June 2021.
  • Jessica A. Knoblauch, “One Tribe’s Fight to Protect the Great Lakes,” Earth Justice, April 2023.
  • Andy Horowitz and Jacob A. C. Remes, “Introducing Critical Disaster Studies,” Critical Disaster Studies, Eds. Jacob A.C. Remes and Andy Horowitz. U of Pennsylvania Press, 2021.
  • Zoe Todd (Métis), “Fish, Kin and Hope: Tending to Water Violations in amiskwaciwâskahikan and Treaty Six Territory,” Afterall: a Journal of Art, Context, and Enquiry (2017): 102-107.

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

Climate Change

• • David Wallace-Wells, “The Uninhabitable Earth,” New York Magazine, 2017 and “Beyond Catastrophe: A New Climate Reality is Coming into View,” New York Times, 2022.
  • Rob Nixon, “Slow Violence,” Chronicle of Higher Education, 2011.
  • Dana Luciano, “The Inhuman Anthropocene,” Avidly, 2015.
  • Kyle Powys Whyte, “Against Crisis Epistemology,” Handbook of Critical Indigenous Studies. Eds  A. Moreton-Robinson, L. Tuhiwai-Smith, C. Andersen, and S. Larkin. Routledge, 2021: 52-64
  • Min Hyoung Song, “The Practice of Sustaining Attention to Climate Change” Climate Lyricism. Duke UP, 2021.
  • Caroline Levine, “Preface” and “Toward an Affirmative Instrumentality,” The Activist Humanist: Form and Method in the Climate Crisis. Princeton UP, 2023.
  • Sarah Jaquette Ray, A Field Guide to Climate Anxiety: How to Keep Your Cool on a Warming Planet. U of California Press, 2020.
  • Rebecca Solnit, “Difficult is Not the Same as Impossible,” Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility. Haymarket Books, 2023.
  • Mary Annaïse Heglar, “Here’s Where You Come In,” Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility. Haymarket Books, 2023.
  • Farhana Sultana, “Decolonizing Climate Coloniality,” Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility. Haymarket Books, 2023.

Indigenous Sovereignty

• • Janet Lewis, The Invasion (Michigan State UP, 1999)
  • Simon Pokagon, The Red Man’s Rebuke (1893).
  • 1836 Treaty of Washington
  • Elena Bruess, “Treaty rights acknowledged for first time in oil pipeline’s controversial history,” Michigan Radio, March 12, 2021.
  • Joanne Barker (Lenape), “For Whom Sovereignty Matters” in Sovereignty Matters: Locations of Contestation and Possibility in Indigenous Struggles for Self-Determination. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Pp: 1-31.
  • Charles Cleland, The Place of the Pike (Gnoozhekaaning): A History of the Bay Mills Indian Community (U of Michigan Press, 2001).
  • Basil Johnston, Ojibway Heritage (Bison Books, 1990).
  • Eve Tuck (Aleut) and K. Wayne Yang. “Decolonization is Not a Metaphor.” Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education, Society (2012): 1-40.
  • Patrick Wolfe. “Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native.” Journal of Genocide Research (2006): 387-409.
  • Mathew L. M. Fletcher (Ottawa), “The Story of the 1836 Treaty of Washington,” The Eagle Returns: The Legal History of the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians
  • Kyle Powys Whyte (Potawatomi), “Is It Colonial Deja Vu? Indigenous Peoples and Climate Injustice” Humanities for the Environment: Integrating Knowledges, Forging New Constellations of Practice. Eds, Joni Adamson, Michael Davis, and Hsinya Huang. Earthscan Publications, 2016: 88-104; and “Too late for indigenous climate justice: Ecological and relational tipping points,” Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change, 2020.
  • “Rights of Manoomin (White Rice),” Center for Democratic and Environmental Rights. (See also White Earth Nation, 1855 Treaty Authority Establishing the Rights of Manoomin).
  • Kathleen Brosemer, et. al., “The energy crises revealed by COVID: Intersections of Indigeneity, inequity, and health,” Energy Research and Social Science (2020).

III. Petroculture

• • Simon Orpana, Gasoline Dreams: Waking Up from Petroculture (Fordham UP, 2021).
  • Warren Cariou (Métis), “An Athabasca Story.” Read Listen Tell, edited by Sophie McCall et al., Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2017, pp. 98-103.
  • Stephanie LeMenager, “Origins, Spills,” Living Oil: Petroleum Culture in the American Century (Oxford UP, 2016).
  • Brett Bloom, Petrosubjectivity: De-Industrializing Our Sense of Self. Breakdown Break Down Press, 2015.
  • Petrocultures Research Group, After Oil. West Virginia UP, 2016.
  • Sheena Wilson, “Energy Imaginaries: Feminist and Decolonial Futures”
  • Daggett, “Conclusion: A Post-Work Energy Politics” from The Birth of Energy: Fossil Fuels, Thermodynamics, and the Politics of Work. Duke UP, 2019.
  • Mark Simpson and Imre Szeman, “Impasse Time,” South Atlantic Quarterly (2021): 77–89.
  • Edward Burtynsky, Oil (photographs)

IV. Crossings: the Border & Infrastructure

• • Agreement Between the Government of Canada and the Government of the United States of America Concerning Transit Pipelines (1977)
  • Imre Szeman, “Pipelines and Territories: On Energy and Environmental Futures in Canada,” On Petrocultures: Globalization, Culture, and Energy (West Virginia UP, 2019): 238-59.
  • Keller Easterling, “Introduction” and “Extrastatecraft,” Extrastatecraft: The Power of Infrastructure Space (Verso, 2016).
  • Daniel Macfarlane, “Fossil Fuels After 1945,” Natural Allies: Canada-US Environmental and Energy Relations, 1867-Present. McGill-Queen’s UP, 2023
  • Lynne Heasley and Daniel Macfarlane, “Negotiating Abundance and Scarcity: Introduction to a Fluid Border,”Border Flows: A Century of the Canadian-American Water Relationship.
  • China Mieville, “Covehithe”
  • Brian Larkin, “The Politics and Poetics of Infrastructure,” Annual Review of Anthropology (2013).
  • Hannah Appel, Nikhil Anand, and Akhil Gupta, “Temporality, Politics, and the Promise of Infrastructure” in The Promise of Infrastructure, Eds. Nikhil Anand, Akhil Gupta, Hannah Appel,  (Duke UP, 2018).
  • Jessica Hurley and Jeffrey Insko, “Introduction: The Infrastructure of Emergency,” American Literature, 2021.
  • Kelly M. Rich, Nicole M. Rizzuto and Susan Zieger, “Introduction,” The Aesthetic Life of Infrastructure: Race, Affect, Environment. Northwestern UP, 2022.
  • Anne Spice (Tlingit), “Fighting Invasive Infrastructures,” Environment and Society (2018): 40-56.
  • Deborah Cowen and Winona LaDuke (Ojibwe), “Beyond Wiindigo Infrastructure,” South Atlantic Quarterly(2020): 243–268.
  • Bruce Braun and Mary E. Thomas, “Beyond Settler Infrastructures,” Settling the Boom: The Sites and Subjects of Bakken Oil (U of Minnesota Press, 2023).
  • Jennifer Wenzel, “Forms of Life: Thinking Fossil Infrastructure and Its Narrative Grammar,” Social Text (2022): 153–179.
  • Lynne Heasley with Daniel Macfarlane, “Water, Oil, and Fish,” The Accidental Reef and Other Odysseys in the Great Lakes. Michigan State UP, 2021.

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

Sarnia

• • Theodore Dreiser, “A Certain Oil Refinery” (1919)
  • David Huebert, “Chemical Valley”
  • Jeffrey Insko, “The Line 5 Disaster is Now,” Line 6B Citizens’ Blog, 2020.
  • Sarah Marie Wiebe, “Atmosphere” and “Skeletons in the Closet: Citizen Wounding and the Biopolitics of Injustice,” Everyday Exposure: Indigenous Mobilization and Environmental Justice in Canada’s Chemical Valley. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2017
  • Canada’s Toxic Chemical Valley, Vice documentary, 2013.
  • Rebecca Altman, “How the Benzene Tree Polluted the World,” The Atlantic, 2017.
  • Max Liboiron (Red River Métis/Michif ), “Introduction,” Pollution is Colonialism (Duke UP, 2021).
  • Amanda Boetzkes and Andrew Pendakis, “Visions of Eternity: Plastic and the Ontology of Oil,” e-flux Journal, 2013.
  • Rachel Deutsch, Cloud Makers (documentary short)

Detroit

• • Jeffrey Insko, “Line 5’s Environmental Calamaties Started When it was Built,” Bridge Michigan, 2019.
  • Allyson Green, “Questions of Environmental Health and Justice Growing with the Petcoke Piles in Detroit,”Scientific American, 2013
  • Virginia Gordon, “Residents sue Marathon refinery over poll,” Michigan Radio, 2016
  • Keith Matheny, “Marathon wants to keep storing pet coke uncovered near Detroit River,” Detroit Free Press, 2019.
  • Derek Seidman, “We consider ourselves a sacrifice zone, because many of the people that live here are Black low-income folk.” Eyes on the Ties, 2022.
  • Terressa A.Benz, “Toxic Cities: Neoliberalism and Environmental Racism in Flint and Detroit Michigan,” Critical Sociology, (2017): 1-14.
  • Martinez, Michelle. “Environmental Justice and Detroit’s Long Shadow,” Gonna Trouble the Water, edited by Miguel De La Torre, Pilgrim Press, 2021.
  • Josiah Rector, Toxic Debt: An Environmental Justice History of Detroit (U of North Carolina Press, 2022).
  • Mohai, Paul, et al. “‘I Didn’t Choose This. It Chose Me.’ Community-Based Environmental Justice Leaders.” New Solutions (2020): 226–36.
  • Julie Sze, Environmental Justice in a Moment of Danger, U of California P, 2020.
  • Environmental injustice and racism in Michigan: A new MLive documentary

VI. Resistance

• • Walter Mignolo, “Introduction,” The Darker Side of Modernity: Global Futures, Decolonial Options. Duke UP, 2011.
  • Andreas Malm, How to Blow Up a Pipeline (Verso, 2021).
  • Thea Riofrancos, “A Burning Planet: Should the climate movement embrace sabotage?,” The Nation, 2022.
  • Ted Hamilton, “The Valve Turners, Part 1: Breaking the Law to Make the Law,” Beyond Fossil Law: Climate Courts, and the Fight for a Sustainable Future. OR Books, 2022.
  • Darin Barney, “Beyond Carbon Democracy: Energy, Infrastructure, and Sabotage,” Energy Culture: Art and Theory on Oil and Beyond, ed. Imre Szeman (West Virginia UP, 2019); and “Sabotage and the Politics of Pipelines” (lecture)
  • Jeff Diamanti and Mark Simpson, “Five Theses on Sabotage in the Shadow of Fossil Capital,” Radical Philosophy, 2018.
  • Kai Bosworth and Charmaine Chua, “Beyond the Chokepoint: Blockades as Social Struggles,” Antipode: A Radical Journal of Geography, 2023.
  • Brian Holmes, “What Can Art Do about Pipeline Politics?” South Atlantic Quarterly, 2017: 426–431.
  • Julian Brave NoiseCat (Canim Lake Band Tsq’escen) and Anne Spice (Tlingit), “A History and Future of Resistance,” Jacobin, September 8, 2016.
  • Kyle Powys Whyte, “Indigenous Environmental Movements and the Function of Governance Institutions,” Oxford Handbook of Environmental Political Theory. Eds. T. Gabrielson, C. Hall, J. Meyer & D. Schlosberg. Oxford UP, 2016: 563-580.
  • Kai Bosworth, “Introduction,” Pipeline Populism: Grassroots Environmentalism in the Twenty-First Century. U of Minnesota P, 2021.
  • Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, “Constellations of Coresistance,” As We Have Always Done: Indigenous Freedom Through Radical Resistance. U of Minnesota Press, 2020.
  • Elizabeth LaPensée, Thunderbird Strike (game)

Additional Resources:

• • IPCC Sixth Assessment Report on Climate Change
  • Michigan Clean Water Action’s Line 5 timeline
  • FLOW (For Love of Water) Line 5 page
  • Oil and Water Don’t Mix
  • Michigan Public Service Commission Line 5 Case Docket
  • Bay Mills Indian Community Enbridge Information Portal
  • Enbridge Line 5 Issues within the Bad River Reservation
  • Water is Life | Indigenous Lifeways Threatened by Enbridge’s Line 5
  • Enbridge Lakehead System map
  • Line 5 spill map
  • Enbridge Line 5 webpages