Environmental Studies

ENVS B203  Environmental Humanities: Environmental Futures Writing Workshop
Bringing the traditional focus of the humanities–questions of meaning, value, ethics, justice and the politics of knowledge production–into environmental domains calls for a radical reworking of a great deal of what we think we know about ourselves and our fields of inquiry. Inhabiting the difficult space of simultaneous critique and action, this course will re-imagine the proper questions and approaches of the humanities, asking how our accumulated knowledge and practice might be refashioned to meet current environmental challenges, to productively rethink ‘the human’ in more than human terms. In order to resituate the human within the environment, and to resituate nonhumans within cultural and ethical domains, we will draw on a range of texts and films, and engage in a range of critical and creative practices of our own.

ENVS B330  Organizing for Climate Action 
To win climate action, you need more than good science, accurate data, and bold ideas. You need power. Behind the scenes of social movements, organizers are setting clear goals, building relationships, and creating meaningful opportunities for others to express their values together. A central premise of this class is that policymaking and social change takes strategic campaigning. Whether you aim to lead campus organizations more effectively, influence public policy, or grow a grassroots movement for a more just and sustainable future, this course will help you develop practical skills for mobilizing collective action.

ENGL B372  Black Ecofeminism(s): Critical Approaches  
How have Black feminist authors and traditions theorized or represented the ecological world and their relationship to it? How does thinking intersectionally about gender(ing) and racialization expand or challenge conventional notions of “nature,” conservation, or environmental justice? In what ways does centering racial blackness critically reframe a host of practical and philosophical questions historically brought together under the sign “ecofeminism?” Combining history and theory, the humanities and the social sciences, this interdisciplinary course will use the work of Black feminist writers (broadly defined) across a range of genres to approach and to trouble the major paradigms and problems of contemporary Euro-American ecofeminist thought. The course uses fiction and poetry by Toni Cade Bambara, Toni Morrison, and Countee Cullen as a gateway to a range of critical work by Jennifer Morgan, Sylvia Wynter, Maria Mies, and Val Plumwood as it attempts to define and deconstruct what Chelsea Frazier calls “Black Feminist Ecological Thought.”