UC Santa Barbara, UCen
Undergraduate EH Courses
With 23 departments offering over 200 unique undergraduate courses that address issues in the environmental humanities (and still more on the way), UC Santa Barbara has an embarrassment of riches in the field. If there is a downside, it is that such an array can make choosing courses a little daunting. The below list of courses should help in sifting through the options. See also Featured Courses.
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ANTHRO 103, Human-Wildlife Interactions
Survey of human-wildlife interactions (e.g., bushmeat, pet trade, crop-raiding). Students examine cascading effects on wildlife, landscapes, and human populations, as well as mitigating approaches relating to our changing perceptions of wildlife and nature.
ANTHRO 110, Technology and Culture
Theories of technological evolution and innovation. Meanings of technology. The social and cultural impact of technology on our everyday lives, including automobile culture, industrial farming, the telephone, and technologies of the body.
ANTHRO 148, Ecological Anthropology
Focuses on the complex and dynamic interactions between human beings and their physical environment. Examines ecological thinking in anthropology and the various theoretical approaches within the discipline that have developed from the coalescence of natural and social sciences.
ARTHI 136C, Architecture of the United States
History of architecture and urban planning: buildings and builders, patrons and occupants, but especially the historical forces and events that transformed the landscape. Course subjects include art, design, technology, economics, politics, and social forces.
ARTHI 136I, The City in History
An historical introduction to the ideas and forms of cities with emphasis on modern urbanism. Examination of social theory to understand the role of industrial capitalism and colonialism in shaping the culture of modern cities, the relationship between the city and the country, the phenomena of class, race, and ethnic separation.
ECON 115, Environmental Economics
Provides a rigorous treatment of environmental economics. Topics include welfare analysis, ethical dimensions of economic criteria for protecting the environment, measuring the demand for environmental goods, property rights, economic incentives, including marketable permits and emission fees, and regulating risk.
ENGL 162, Milton and Ecology
Because air pollution, acid rain, deforestation, endangered species, wetland loss, animal rights, and rampant consumerism were all issues of great concern in Renaissance England, in this course we will consider a range of Milton’s works, including Paradise Lost, against the backdrop of these environmental issues.
ENV S 1, Introduction to Environmental Studies
“Environmental Studies” requires insights from many disciplines, including the social as well as biophysical science and the humanities. This introduction offers an overview of the field, examining both our planet and the ways in which we humans depend on it.
ENV S 3, Introduction to the Social and Culture Environment
An introduction to the relationship of societies and the environment from prehistorical times to the present. The course is global in perspective, and includes history, literature, philosophy, economics, science, and culture as evidence for examining the human social environment.
ENV S 1080, History of the Oceans
Explores how people have experienced, understood, transformed, and attempted to conserve the world’s oceans throughout human history. Interdisciplinary approach includes aspects of science, technology, politics, law, culture, and material biophysical relationships.
ENV S 122NE: Cultural Representations: Nature and the Environment
Perceptions of nature have changed throughout history and vary across cultures. Course explores changing expressions of our changing relations to the world we live in, with emphasis on cultural movements (films, literature, newspapers, etc.) that have affected contemporary American experience.
ENV S 160, American Environmental Literature
Assesses contributions of literary texts to American environmental movements. Examines influences of writers such as Thoreau, Rachel Carson, and Edward Abbey upon environmental perceptions, values, and attitudes in American cultural history and upon rhetoric and politics of contemporary environmental debates.
ENV S 161, Environmental Communications: Contemporary Strategies and Tactics
Surveys strategies and tactics for communicating about the environment and sustainability in various organizational, political, cultural, business, mass media and social media contexts. Students will analyze, evaluate and practice communications methods using a spectrum of communications channels.
ENV S 183, Films and the Natural and Human Environment
Course presents a series of popular films and professional documentaries representing a range of trends, images, and issues associated with the natural and human environments. Visual images and critical thinking skills are combined to enhance understanding of environmental issues presented by the media.
ENV S 188, Ethics of Human-Environment Relations
Survey of contemporary environmental ethics, focusing on both philosophical and applied issues. Topics include anthropocentrism and its alternatives, the role of science and aesthetics, multicultural perspectives and the problem of relativism, and the conflict between radical and reformist environmentalism.
GEOG 3A, Oceans and Atmosphere
Introduction to the oceans and atmosphere and their role in the Earth’s climate and its weather patterns. Focus on the flows of solar energy through the ocean and atmosphere systems. Human impacts on the Earth’s climate are also introduced.
GEOG 3B, Land, Water, and Life
Study of the interactions among water, landforms, soil, and vegetation that create and modify the surface of the Earth. Impacts of physical environment on human societies and humans as agents of environmental change.
GEOG 5, People, Place, and Environment
Survey of spatial differentiation and organization of human activity and interaction with the Earth’s biophysical systems. Sample topics include human spatial decision-making behavior, migration, population growth, economic development, industrial location, urbanization, and human impacts on the natural environment.
GEOG 8, Living with Global Warming
Overview of global warming and climate change processes. Description of complex relationships between scientific, technological, economic, social, political and historical facets of global warming and climate change. Introduction to the concept and practice of climate modeling.
GLOBL 171, Global Environmental Law and Policy
A focus on global environmental problems in our time, particularly climate change and its impact on resource scarcity, human security, energy geopolitics, and democracy in an unevenly structured world system, including the search for world order solutions.
HIST 107E, History of Animal Use in Science
Examines history of scientific uses of animals from antiquity to the present. Topics include vivisection, field trials, and the development of drugs and vaccines. Changing ethical ideas about animals, including the relationship between animal rights and environmental ethics, is also considered.
HIST 108O, History of the Oceans
Explores how people have experienced, understood, transformed, and attempted to conserve the world’s oceans throughout human history. Interdisciplinary approach includes aspects of science, technology, politics, law, culture, and material biophysical relationships.
INT 91, Interdisciplinary Issues in Aquatic Sciences and Policy
A seminar-style course examining biological, environmental, political, and economic issues in aquatic topics, including oceanography, marine pharmacology and biotechnology, coastal geology and coastal processes, fisheries, and ocean policy.
POLI SCI 175, Politics of the Environment
Analysis of environmental policy issues and their treatment in the political process. Discussion of the interplay of substantive issues, ideology, institutions, and private groups in the development, management, protection, and preservation of natural resources and the natural environment.
RG ST 193, Religion and Ecology in the Americas
An overview of the growing field of religion and ecology in the Americas. Focus on spiritual traditions and landbased knowledge indigenous to the Western Hemisphere.
WRIT 109ES, Writing for Environmental Studies
Analysis and practice of various forms of academic and professional writing for and in the disciplines.
ANTH 166FP, Small Scale Food Production
Biological, ecological, social, and economic principles of small-scale food production and their practical applications. Includes each student cultivating a garden plot; lab exercises, field trips to local farms and gardens.
ANTH 168, Ethnology in Rural California: Transformations in Agriculture, Farm Labor, and Rural Communities
Provides a systematic review of research by anthropologists and other social scientists on the development of agriculture and its effects on rural society. Special emphasis is given to the settlement of immigrant farm workers and the formation of new communities.
ENGL 165EM, Topics in Literature: Cities and Literature: London and Boston in the 17th and 18th centuries
This course will investigate the relationship between, on the one hand, historically distinct forms of literature, and, on the other, the production of space into the lived places between the 16th and 18th century. Among our chief lines of investigation will be: How do distinct spaces and performances of literature (whether aural and silent) mediate each other? Can we understand literature, whether written or spoken, as vibrant matter that thrives within the ecological niche provided by the early modern city and town? Just how are the distinct genres and forms of literature (drama, poetry, non-fiction narrative, novel) shaped to urban spaces so they can proliferate as private and public entertainment? What sort of audience practices and experiences do they afford? Our course readings will range from two popular non-Shakespearean city comedies (Ben Jonson’s Epicene {1600} and Thomas Dekker’s The Shoe-maker’s Holiday {1609}); Defoe’s account of London’s response a health catastrophe in Journal of the Plague Year {1722}; the literary work needed to envision and execute the plantation of New England by the first Puritans (John Winthrop, Increase Mather, Ann Bradstreet, Ann Hutchinson), as well as Hawthorne’s classic account of the costs and contradictions of that project in the The Scarlett Letter {1850}. We will draw freely on maps and poetry to deepen our understanding of urban place and literary tropes. Course assignments include one short 2-page essay (a close reading of a literary text), a “media remix performance” at the end of the term, and a final paper related to that performance.
ENGL 197, Upper-Division Seminar: Literature of Boston, 1630-1850
This course will investigate the relationship between, on the one hand, historically distinct forms of literature, and, on the other, the production of space into the lived places (streets, wharfs, buildings) of Boston between the founding and 1850. Among our chief lines of investigation will be: How do distinct spaces the aural and silent performances of literature mediate one another? Can we understand literature, whether written or spoken, as vibrant matter that thrives within the ecological niche provided by the early modern town, thriving 18th century port, or great the 19th century city? What sort of audience practices and experiences does this literature afford?
ENV S 3, Introduction to the Social and Cultural Environment
An introduction to the relationship of societies and the environment from prehistorical times to the present. The course is global in perspective, and includes history, literature, philosophy, economics, science, and culture as evidence for examining the human social environment.
ENV S 127, Concepts of Environmental Education and Practicum
Conceptual introduction to Environmental Education (EE) through study and research of EE history, learner characteristics, models of excellence, and professional networks. Students utilize sound educational principles and hands-on experiences to plan, implement, and evaluate a quality EE experience for others.
ENV S 166FP, Small-Scale Food Production
Biological, ecological, social, and economic principles of small-scale food production and their practical applications. Includes each student cultivating a garden plot; lab exercises, field trips to local farms and gardens.
ENV S 176A, Water Policy in the West: Linking Science and Environmental and Economic Values
Examines water supply and use, the science of water systems and watersheds, key concepts in water policy, and the basics of water law as a fundamental element of the history and context for water policy in the West.
ENV S 179, Natural Resource Economics
Theory and capital theory applied to problems of conservation and management of natural resources. Analysis of public policy with special emphasis on nonrenewable resources, management of forests, deforestation and species extinction, and use of fish and game resources.
ENV S 189, Religion and Ecology in the Americas
An overview of the growing field of religion and ecology in the Americas. Focus on spiritual traditions and landbased knowledge indigenous to the Western hemisphere.
GEOG 5, People, Place, and Environment
Survey of spatial differentiation and organization of human activity and interaction with the Earth’s biophysical systems. Sample topics include human spatial decision-making behavior, migration, population growth, economic development, industrial location, urbanization, and human impacts on the natural environment.
GEOG 135S, Intense Mock Environmental Summit
Mock summit in which students act as representatives of different countries participating in environmental treaty negotiations. This three-week course immerses students in the topic of global change and its associated policies, mimicking pressures and intensity at real environmental summits.
GEOG 171FP, Small-Scale Food Production
Biological, ecological, social, and economic principles of small-scale food production and their practical applications. Includes each student cultivating a garden plot; lab exercises, field trips to local farms and gardens.
HIST 109, Science and Technology in America
Science and technology in American intellectual, cultural, religious, and political life with focus on 19th/20th centuries. Examples include rise of scientific enterprise and infrastructure; technology and America’s economic growth; American research styles; science and the military; space program; environmentalism; biotechnology.
HIST 148AU, African Urban History: From the Ancient City State to the Contemporary Metropolis
The changing meaning of African urbanity from historical case studies and more contemporary cityscapes through particular themes, such as statecraft, ideology, production, political economies of wealth and poverty, cultural performativity, politics and hegemony, labor migrancy and the rural-urban nexus.
INT 94LV, Biotechnology and Society
This course will focus on recent developments in the field of biotechnology and their impact on human society. Topics will include: why drugs cost so much, genetically altered foods, stem cells, cloning, genetic profiling, and DNA & the Law (forensic science).
INT 94QB, Imaging and Imagining Sea Level Rise
How do different communities from the populations of sinking islands to the residents of coastal California experience, visually represent, and respond to sea level rise? In conjunction with this year’s Critical Issues in America theme of sea level rise, students will meet as a group and attend film screenings, guest lectures, and other special events.
INT 94QE, Mono Lake, Owens Valley and LA’s Water Supply
This seminar will introduce the history of the LA water supply starting with the construction of the LA Aqueduct, followed by a discussion of the Mono Lake ‘public trust’ court case and efforts to increase water reuse in the basin. The class will include a 3-day field trip (Early Friday to Late Sunday) to Mono Basin to exam the aqueduct and tour Mono Lake. We will stay at the UC reserve station, SNARL.
LIT CS 110, Travel Writing: Writing Beyond Place
If you’ve ever had an experience that you were dying to share–some trip around the world, a dining excursion, a horrendous moment or one that shook you to your core–then chances are you’re a travel writer. Gone are the days of boring reviews and nose-to-the-air perspectives. With creative nonfiction ever so prolific in popular culture, with websites such as Yelp and Travel Advisor creating an “every person is a critic” marketplace, the popularity of travel writing has increased exponentially. A good travel writer is one who writes beyond place… who can take experiences and form them into meaningful stories… who can create a persona, a voice, a particular point of view from which they see the world. But, of course, there’s more to it than just your point of view. And who are you to have an opinion anyway?
POL S 162, Urban Government and Politics
Problems of politics and administration in urban and metropolitan areas.
RG ST 193, Religion and Ecology in the Americas
An overview of the growing field of religion and ecology in the Americas. Focus on spiritual traditions and landbased knowledge indigenous to the western hemisphere.
SOC 134G, Green Movements and Green Parties
Examines how environmental organizations and green political parties are shaping policy formulation on environmental issues in different developed and developing countries, with a focus on the US experience.
WRIT 109ES, Writing for Environmental Studies
Analysis and practice of various forms of writing for environmental studies, both academic and professional. Attention to research methods, design of papers, development of graphics, stylistic clarity, and editing strategies.
ANTH 110, Technology and Culture
Theories of technological evolution and innovation. Meanings of technology. The social and cultural impact of technology on our everyday lives, including automobile culture, industrial farming, the telephone, and technologies of the body.
ANTH 127, Hunters and Gatherers
What do Pygmies, Aborigines, and Eskimos have in common? What is the relationship between nature and culture in these simple societies? These questions and others will be examined through case studies and cross-cultural comparisons.
ANTH 130B, Global Tourism and Environmental Conservation
Focus on the contradictions between international tourism as an economic development strategy and environmental conservation efforts, especially in an era of climate change. One major objective is to help students make more informed decisions about their own tourist experiences.
ANTH 166BT, Biotechnology, Food, and Agriculture
Social, cultural, ethical, biological, and environmental issues surrounding biotechnology (BT) and the food system. Includes theory and method of BT; scientific, social and political control of BT; effect of BT on genetic diversity, small-scale farmers, the environment, food supply, consumer health.
ANTH 184, Settlement Pattern Analysis in Archaeology
How the arrangement of archaeological sites across the landscape indicates aspects of human culture, including subsistence strategies and socio-political complexity. Methods of obtaining and interpreting settlement data.
ARTHI 117C, Nineteenth-Century British Art and Culture
An interdisciplinary study of British art and culture in the nineteenth century. Topics may include: Romantic landscape painting and poetry; art and the Industrial Revolution; London and Victorian images of the city; images of childhood; Romanticism in Britain; and more.
ARTHI 134E, The Art of the Chinese Landscape
Chinese approaches to landscape as subject matter in art, with a focus on painting and garden architecture. The course begins with the immortality cult in the Han Dynasty (206 B.C.-A.D.221) and ends with contemporary artists of the twentieth century.
ARTHI 136A, Nineteenth-Century Architecture
The history of architecture and planning beginning with eighteenth-century architectural trends in Europe and concluding with late nineteenth-century efforts to reform the city. Exploration of the culture of nineteenth-century modernity through architecture and urban design centered around the themes of industrialization, colonialism, and the idea of landscape. The scope is global.
ARTHI 136Y, Modern Architecture in Southern California, C. 1890s to the Present
Critically analyzes the changing definitions of modern architecture in Southern California from the 1890s to the present, focusing on the work of architects like Greene and Greene, R.M. Schindler, and R. Neutra, as well as the Case Study Houses.
C LIT, Transpacific Literature
Looks at the Pacific as the primary location for literary and historical imagination since the Age of Exploration. Studies the crisscross, transpacific field of inscriptions ranging from Captain Cook to Herman Melville, Mark Twain, Jack London,and Maxine Hong Kingston.
EACS 130, Tourism in East Asia
Surveys the historical, cultural, and economic significance of tourists destinations in South Korea, China, and Japan. Using case studies ranging from temples, museums, monuments and theme parks, course analyzes how selected “images/myths” of East Asia have been invented, manipulated, and propagated in the commodification of culture and heritage.
ECON 115, Environmental Economics
Provides a rigorous treatment of environment economics. Topics include welfare analysis, ethical dimensions of economic criteria for protecting the environment, measuring the demand for environmental goods, property rights, economic incentives, including marketable permits and emission fees, and regulating risk.
ENGL 122AP, Cultural Representations: Literature and the Environment: Imagining Asia and the Pacific
A study of literary works, paintings, films, and other representational forms as they influence cultural attitudes. The courses offered will focus on such topics as the body, the city, the everyday, the marketplace, and the machine.
ENGL 122WE, Cultural Representations: Water Imaginations
A study of literary works, paintings, films, and other representational forms as they influence cultural attitudes. The courses offered will focus on such topics as the body, the city, the everyday, the marketplace, and the machine.
ENGL 165EW, Topics in Literature: Life After the End of the World
One of our primary concerns in post-9/11 America is “security” — the attempt to stabilize and maintain our traditional way of life in the face of internal and external threats. This course examines literary and filmic representations of life after catastrophic failures of this attempt to keep “life” moving forward along the tracks that we expect it to move. Some of the catastrophes we will examine include plague (Saramago’s Blindness, Boyle’s 28 Days Later), nuclear holocaust (McCarthy’s The Road), changes in ecosystem balance (Wyndham’s The Day of the Triffids, Atwood’s Oryx and Crake), and unexplained alterations to the metaphysical structure of life itself (Romero’s Dawn of the Dead).
ENV S 125A, Principles of Environmental Law
An introduction to the history and methodology of law as it relates to human use of the environment. Case studies are used to examine common law, constitutional and modern environmental laws, with an emphasis on current theories and principles.
ENV S 130B, Global Tourism and Environmental Conservation
Focus on the contradictions between international tourism as an economic development strategy and environmental conservation efforts, especially in an era of climate change. One major objective is to help students make more informed decisions about their own tourist experiences.
ENV S 135A, Principles of Environmental Planning
Introduction to the history, theory, and trends of urban, regional, and environmental planning in both California and the United States. Field trips to local urban areas.
ENV S 157, Santa Barbara County Agrifood System
Investigates current agricultural system and potential benefits and costs of localization. Covers theory, data collection, analysis methods, key indicators (greenhouse gas emissions, biodiversity, migrant labor, nutrition, community health), policies and actions for change. Students conduct and present research as team.
ENV S 161, Environmental Communications: Contemporary Strategies and Tactics
Surveys strategies and tactics for communicating about the environment and sustainability in various organizational, political, cultural, business, mass media and social media contexts. Students will analyze, evaluate and practice communications methods using a spectrum of communications channels.
ENV S 166BT, Biotechnology, Food, and Agriculture
Social, cultural, ethical, biological, and environmental issues surrounding biotechnology (BT) and the food system. Includes theory and method of BT; scientific, social and political control of BT; effect of BT on genetic diversity, small-scale farmers, the environment, food supply, consumer health.
ENV S 175, Environmental Economics
Provides a rigorous treatment of environmental economics. Topics include welfare analysis, ethical dimensions of economic criteria for protecting the environment, measuring the demand for environmental goods, property rights, economic incentives, including marketable permits and emission fees, and regulating risk.
ENV S 183, Films of the Natural and Human Environment
Course presents a series of popular films and professional documentaries representing a range of trends, images, and issues associated with the natural and human environments. Visual images and critical thinking skills are combined to enhance understanding of environmental issues presented by the media.
ENV S 184, Gender and the Environment
A philosophical, evolutionary, and cross-cultural analysis of the ways women and men may relate differently to their environment resulting in the design of gender-sensitive and sustainable policies for planning and development in both the developing and the developed world.
ENV S 188, The Ethics of Human-Environment Relations
Survey of contemporary environmental ethics, focusing on both philosophical and applied issues. Topics include anthropocentrism and its alternatives, the role of science and aesthetics, multicultural perspectives and the problem of relativism, and the conflict between radical and reformist environmentalism.
Geog 141A, Population Geography
Various geographic dimensions of human population dynamics: fertility, mortality, and migration. The concepts and language of demography are introduced. The causes and consequences of population dynamics are investigated, including links among population, environment, and development.
GEOG 171BT, Biotechnology, Food, and Agriculture
Social, cultural, ethical, biological, and environmental issues surrounding biotechnology (BT) and food systems. Includes theory and method of BT; scientific, social, and political control of BT; effect of BT on genetic diversity, small-scale farmers, environment, food supply, consumer health.
GEOG 185A, Geography Planning and Policy Making
Relevance of geographic knowledge and skills to aspects of planning and policy making. Includes review of core concepts in decision making, planning theory, systems analysis, information systems, urban and regional modeling, forecasting, impact analysis, implementation of decisions, planning policies.
GLOBL 171, Global Environmental Law and Policy
A focus on global environmental problems in our time, particularly climate change and its impact on resource scarcity, human security, energy geopolitics, and democracy in an unevenly structured world system, including the search for world order solutions.
HIST 105A, The Atomic Age
The history of military uses of nuclear energy and the attendant problems. Topics included: Manhattan project, decision to use the bomb, legislation, AEC, arms race, testing, fallout, civil defense, disarmament efforts, foreign programs, espionage.
SOC 105E, Environmental Sociology
Traces the history of environmentalism and applies social science theories, concepts, and methods to analyze critical contemporary environmental issues and societal responses to them.
SOC 126, Urban Society
Problems of the city, (e.g., congestion, homelessness, violence) are examined in light of larger economic and social forces which structure urban life. Through use of slides depicting urban settings, causes and consequences of different ways urban settlements have been organized are considered.
WRIT 105S, Writing About Sustainability
Analysis and practice of various forms of writing that address sustainability in interdisciplinary contexts. Students will research, write, and reflect on concepts and practices of sustainability, examining the role of words and images in communicating sustainability ideas to diverse audiences.
WRIT 109ES, Writing for Environmental Studies
Analysis and practice of various forms of writing for environmental studies, both academic and professional. Attention to research methods, design of papers, development of graphics, stylistic clarity, and editing strategies.
ANTH 129MG, Behavioral Ecology of Hunter Gatherers
A thorough introduction using a behavioral ecology approach to the diversity of behaviors found among foragers in Africa, South America, Southeast Asia, and Australia. Topics include: diet and subsistence, mating, demography, social behavior, mobility and settlement patterns, gender, indigenous rights, and conservation.
ANTH 130A, Coupled Human and Natural Systems: Risks, Vulnerability, Resilience, and Disasters
Examines human dimensions of global environmental change in developing countries from an interdisciplinary social science perspective. Compares and contrasts alternative conceptual and analytical models of dynamic, interrelated human-environmental systems and presents recent approaches to understanding risk, vulnerability, resilience, and disasters.
ANTH 148, Ecological Anthropology
Focuses on the complex and dynamic interactions between human beings and their physical environment. Examines ecological thinking in anthropology and the various theoretical approaches within the discipline that have developed from the coalescence of natural and social sciences.
ANTH 149, World Agriculture, Food, and Population
Evolution, current status, and alternative futures of agriculture, food, and population worldwide. Achieving environmentally, socially, and economically sustainable food systems; soil, water, crops, energy, and labor; diversity, stability, and ecosystems management; farmer and scientist knowledge and collaboration; common property management.
ANTH 162, Prehistoric Food Production
A history of the process of plant and animal domestication in the Americas, the Near East, Asia, and Africa. Course focuses on the specific biological changes in the major domesticates as well as associated social changes in human life.
ARTHI 5A, Introduction to Architecture and Environment
Architecture is an act of place-making with which man has intertwined ever closer his world with the natural one. The course discusses basic architectural construction methods, discipline-specific terminology, design strategies, and interpretative concepts. Students must keep a visual, architectural journal.
ARTHI 136X, Culture of Architecture: Perception and Analysis of the Built Environment
Introduces the student to a first-hand experience of the built-environment through perception and analysis of design; understanding historical, theoretical, technical and artistic structures that shape and sustain the culture of architecture.
ARTHI 142D, Gardens, Land, and Landscape in the West: Renaissance to 1900
Changing nature of garden and landscape design from the Renaissance to NYC’s Central Park, studied as a function of the changing functions and status of land during the long passage from feudalism to industrial capitalism.
C LIT 191, Fantasy and the Fantastic
Course explores the creation of a space where a fantastic perception of reality developed and thrived, hesitating between the real and the supernatural, in the intermediate space of the unexplained and unexplainable. Works by Balzac, Poe, Stevenson, James, and Borges.
ECON 115, Environmental Economics
Provides a rigorous treatment of environment economics. Topics include welfare analysis, ethical dimensions of economic criteria for protecting the environment, measuring the demand for environmental goods, property rights, economic incentives, including marketable permits and emission fees, and regulating risk.
ENGL 122BH, Cultural Representations: Humanities Beyond the Human
A study of literary works, paintings, films, and other representational forms as they influence cultural attitudes. The courses offered will focus on such topics as the body, the city, the everyday, the marketplace, and the machine.
ENGL 122NE, Cultural Representations: Nature and the Environment
Perceptions of nature have changed throughout history and vary across cultures. Course explores changing expressions of our changing relations to the world we live in, with emphasis on cultural movements (films, literature, newspapers, etc.) that have affected contemporary American experience.
ENGL 146AI, Literature of Technology: Artificial Intelligences and Other Nonhumans – The Literature and Film of AI
Nonhumans have become increasingly intelligent from the middle of the twentieth century to the present. These intelligent machines sometimes emulate the way humans mediate their world (e.g., through recognizing visual patterns, or processing text) but do so in ways very different from human brains. This course will examine how that difference affects the way intelligent nonhumans use and influence media forms we consider quintessentially human, such the novel and cinema.
ENV S 1, Introduction to Environmental Studies
“Environmental Studies” requires insights from many disciplines, including the social as well as biophysical science and the humanities. This introduction offers an overview of the field, examining both our planet and the ways in which we humans depend on it.
ENV S 106, Critical Thinking About Human-Environment Problems and Solutions
Focus on two interrelated aspects of human-environment interactions where shortfalls in critical thinking are important – our thinking about human- related “problems and causes” and potential “solutions.” Gain feel for seductiveness of common misconceptions and learn why to move beyond them.
ENV S 116, Building Sustainable Communities
Examines sustainability, communities, and urban systems in a global context. Covers impacts cities have on the environmental systems that support them, and explores ways to improve urban systems through technology, policy, and design.
ENV S 122NE, Cultural Representations: Nature and the Environment
Perceptions of nature have changed throughout history and vary across cultures. Course explores changing expressions of our changing relations to the world we live in, with emphasis on cultural movements (films, literature, newspapers, etc.) that have affected contemporary American experience.
ENV S 130, Coupled Human and Natural Systems: Risks, Vulnerability, Resilience, and Disasters
Examines human dimensions of global environmental change in developing countries from an interdisciplinary social science perspective. Compares and contrasts alternative conceptual and analytical models of dynamic, interrelated human-environmental systems and presents recent approaches to understanding risk, vulnerability, resilience, and disasters.
ENV S 149, World Agriculture, Food, and Population
Evolution, current status, and alternative futures of agriculture, food and population worldwide. Achieving environmentally, socially, and economically sustainable food systems; soil, water, crops, energy and labor; diversity, stability and ecosystems management; farmer and scientist knowledge and collaboration; common property management.
ENV S 172, Waste Management: Product Stewardship, Recycling and Renewable Energy
Overview of policy, technology, and economic dimensions of managing wastes in the twenty-first century. Covers the emergence of product stewardship, domestic and international recycling, composting of organic materials, conversion of organic materials to renewable energy, waste incineration and land filling.
ENV S 173, American Environmental History
Traces the history of American attitudes and behavior toward nature. Focus on wilderness, the conservation movement, and modern forms of environmentalism.
ENV S 175, Environmental Economics
Provides a rigorous treatment of environmental economics. topics include welfare analysis, ethical dimensions of economic criteria for protecting the environment, measuring the demand for environmental goods, property rights, economic incentives, including marketable permits and emission fees, and regulating risk.
GEOG 5, People, Place, and Environment
Survey of spatial differentiation and organization of human activity and interaction with the Earth’s biophysical systems. Sample topics include human spatial decision-making behavior, migration, population growth, economic development, industrial location, urbanization, and human impacts on the natural environment.
GEOG 109, Economic Geography
Introduction to the study of spatial economic theories with applications at the urban, regional, and global scales. Topics include settlement system dynamics and regional development, land economics and land use policies, and regional inequality and poverty.
GOEG 161, World Agriculture, Food, and Population
Evolution, current status, and alternative futures of agriculture, food and population worldwide. Achieving environmentally, socially, and economically sustainable food systems; soil, water, crops, energy and labor; diversity, stability and ecosystems management; farmer and scientist knowledge and collaboration; common property management.
GEOG 182, Global Cities in the Information Age
Study of the economic, social, and political networks that link together cities of global importance. Specializations and roles of global cities in the information age economy. Examination of individual cities at the top tiers of the global urban hierarchy.
HIST 173T, American Environmental History
Traces the history of American attitudes and behavior toward nature. Focus on wilderness, the conservation movement, and modern forms of environmentalism.
INT 94OV: Introduction to Sustainability
This seminar will introduce students to the many Sustainability-related activities on campus and in the surrounding community. We will have invited speakers from various organizations to discuss their activities and the general theme of Sustainability in many of its aspects, including Energy, Waste, Water, Food, Land use, Efficiency, Outreach, Transportation, etc.
INT 94PF, Tales of the City
The city is the key space of modernity, at the same time a place of excitement and narcosis, crowds and solitude. In this seminar we will read texts that represent the city and urban experience in all its complexity and contradictions. The readings include texts by Edgar Allan Poe, Jean Rhys, Emile Zola, Virginia Woolf, Raymond Carver. Through the readings we will discuss the figure of the flaneur, the spectacle, consumerism, and the presence of women in public space.
LIT CS 113, Environmental Media
The study and practice of environmental media. Students study the ways and means of how to inform the world on environmental problems and issues, then learn the techniques of writing and shooting documentary, writing environmental blogs, web pages, PSA’s, poetry films, blogs, short films, mashups, webisodes, etc
RG ST 156, Environmental Ethics
Environmental Ethics probes questions of duty and policy regarding human impact on the natural world. Topics such as climate change, sustainable economics, population explosion, and the standing of non-human animals are examined from various perspectives.
SOC 134EC, Earth in Crisis
Explores the causes and consequences of climate change on a global scale, covering the state of the science in layman’s terms, the current and future social impacts of climate change, the global negotiations process, and climate justice activism.