ENVS 1039 Dances with Avatar

Kevin Costner’s 1990 film Dances with Wolves and James Cameron’s 2009 Avatar share more than plot, character, and setting. Both tell stories of colonial invasion, military conquest, and environmental exploitation. Both feature Euro-American protagonists transformed physically and culturally by contact with indigenous peoples; both “heroes” try to “save” native peoples and “nature” from annihilation. In this course we will critique ideas of nature, race, gender, and technology and situate both films in historical, cultural, and ideological context. We will also examine critical responses as reflections of cultural debates at the turn of the 21th century.