New School course poses ‘(eco)feminism’ and ‘(eco)Marxism’ as ‘viable alternatives’ to capitalism

A private university in New York City is offering a course titled “Critical Political Ecology/Economy: From Extraction Regeneration” that puts forward “(eco)feminism” and “(eco)Marxism” as “viable alternatives” to current political structures. 

According to The New School’s website description, the fall course’s premise examines capitalism’s alleged failures from an ecological and economic perspective. Students will study what is “necessary” to “substantiate viable alternatives” to the system. 

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The course’s subject matter uses several disciplines to examine how capitalism supposedly “disrupts Earth system processes.”

 “. . . in analyzing the making of the world-system economy/ecology of Euroamerican colonial capitalist modernity, [the course] also charts the histories of alternative social ecologies,” the description says.

The “living history” course seeks to “substantiate viable alternatives and transformative paradigms like (eco)feminism,(eco)Marxism; postcolonialism, decolonialism, Indigenous, post-development, degrowth, post-extractivism, and environmental/climate justice.”

The course, which starts Monday, will be taught by Bhumika Muchhala, who describes herself as a “[f]eminist and decolonial political economist” on her X page.

Muchhala is also teaching a course called “Research as Accompaniment: Scholar-activist Methodologies for Social, Environmental, & Global Change “ at The New School this fall. 

“Due to its past and present complicity in colonialism, imperialism, and capitalism, Eurocentric academia has a complicated relationship with oppressed populations around the world,” the course description says. 

Last year, Muchhala published a paper in the Third World Network titled: “A Feminist Social Contract Rooted in Fiscal Justice: An outline of eight feminist economics alternatives for fiscal justice.” 

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“A feminist social contract rooted in structural feminism involves an intentional shift from viewing women as individuals, to gender as a system structuring unequal power relations, distribution, voice, and rights,” Muchhala wrote in that paper. “A feminist social contract seeks to interrogate, unsettle, and ultimately dismantle power dynamics constructed within colonial, patriarchal, racial, and capitalist hierarchies of humanity.”

Campus Reform contacted The New School and Bhumika Muchhala for comment. This story will be updated accordingly.