Transdisciplinary Environmental Humanities

Emergent transdisciplinary fields, such as the environmental humanities, reflect a growing awareness that responses to contemporary environmental dilemmas require the collaborative work of not only diverse scientists, medical practitioners, and engineers, but also more expansive publics, including artists, urban and rural communities, social scientists, and legal fields. This course is inspired by the need to attend to environmental challenges as inherently social concerns.  The course is co-taught by faculty from the School of Arts and Sciences and the School of Medicine, and will address the challenges and possibilities of working across disciplinary boundaries, building collaborative affinities, and negotiating frictions between diverse methodologies and epistemological approaches. Through their different lenses, Dr. Lyons and Dr. Howarth will foster interdisciplinary collaboration and scholarship by engaging students in discussions and research that bring together the arts and sciences with a focus on urban air pollution, soil remediation, deforestation, and water contamination, among other issues. A comparative exploration of environmental justice in both Colombia and the U.S. will be infused into the course.

This course is a required course for the Environmental Humanities Minor. See the full minor requirements list.