Handbook

Subject Area: Environmental Humanities

Environmental Humanities focuses on developing critical insight into the ‘human dimensions’ of environmental issues, issues that now permeate almost every aspect of our lives, from everyday lifestyle decisions to collective and public choices concerning urban development, energy security and food production. This course will introduce you to how underlying cultural, economic, and political systems shape environments. We will work through examples of how the places where we live, and the people we live with, are shaped and influenced by competing interests, social and spatial structures, and other living creatures. The 'environment' is not just a backdrop for human activity—it is actively made by dynamic agents with situated ways of seeing the world. We will present you with the opportunity to think differently and critically about living in the Anthropocene—the era when human enterprises and activities generate global-scale change with local impacts. You will be introduced to experts who represent the diversity of the interdisciplinary fields of Environmental Humanities, including anthropology, human geography, fine arts, philosophy, history, and science and technology studies. Environment and Society is the gateway to the Environmental Humanities major and minor and can also be taken as an elective.