HUM 380 Environmental Humanities

General

• Articulate underlying assumptions about human relationships with the environment across various artistic genres.
• Apply a number of critical theories or frameworks informing an artwork (e.g., ecocriticism, environmental racism, indigenous activisms, animal rights, ecofeminism, green screen, radical plant studies, etc.).
• Describe the basic institutional arrangements (social, legal, political, economic, religious) that are evolving to deal with environmental and natural resource challenges on a global scale.
• Analyze a given artwork for its connections of the bio-physical environment to socio-cultural systems (e.g., political, economic, religious, or other social values).
• Develop original and significant interpretations of artworks and their environmental rhetoric.
• Evaluate research material (e.g., the difference between primary and secondary sources, scholarly vs general sources, what peer-reviewed means, how to recognize risky sources and propaganda).
• Propose and assess alternative solutions to environmental problems.
• Create independent arguments in well-crafted academic essays articulating and defending actions they would take on various environmental problems.
• Engage with the local community for the completion of an environmental or environmental-art project.