This course traces the idea and practice of refuge as it is applied to humans, animals, plants, and environments. What does the category of refuge mean for different subjects, spaces, and situations? What does refuge look like, feel like, and sound like as it travels across space and time? We examine places where refuge is enacted around the world, including refugee camps, nature refuges, animal sanctuaries and shelters, sanctuary cities, and seed banks, to understand how meanings of refuge are produced, and how refuge structures politics of belonging and unbelonging in the world. We will take as our starting point the idea that refuge offers both possibilities of care, safety, and hope at the same time as experiences of danger, securitized captivity, and abjectness. In addition to reading ethnographic work on refuge, students will examine the spatial, material, and multisensory dimensions of refuge sites; conduct research at The New School’s archives and special collections; and participate in site visits to places of refuge and sanctuary in New York.