Environmental Communication Minor

This course focuses on the multidisciplinary field of environmental communication and helps students understand the ways in which environmental issues and conflicts develop, the values underlying the ideologies on these issues, the ways in which these values are presented, and the variety of scientific and technical communication genres involved in understanding environmental communication messages. Significant focus is given to issues of race and racism.

Full course description for Environmental Communication

This course surveys the key themes and developments in world environmental history; that is, the history of how human societies have changed their environments and how the environment has influenced the courses of societies. It examines pre-modern cultures' intellectual, economic, and technological approaches to the environment, the role of epidemic and environmental transformation in the colonial age, and the revolutionary changes introduced to the environment in the modern period of industrialization and population growth and the rapid consumption of resources that has involved. The course places contemporary environmental issues in their deep historical contexts.

Full course description for World Environmental History

This course surveys the history of environmentalism in America over the last 100 years. Students are introduced to the ideas of the environmentalists-from Theodore Roosevelt and Rachel Carson to EarthFirst!'s Dave Foreman and Vice President Al Gore-about wilderness preservation, resource conservation, public health and, fundamentally, about the proper relationship between humans and the natural world. Environmentalist thought and actions are considered in the context of ecological and resource crises (such as the Dust Bowl of the 1930s and the oil crisis of the 1970s), of problems created by technological applications (such as the widespread use of DDT) and of particular cultural developments (such as the closing of the "frontier" at the turn of the century and the growth of the counterculture in the 1960s).

Full course description for The Greening of America: Environmental History since 1900

This class focuses on the history and background of the social and environmental issues confronting racial and ethnic communities in the United States. Students learn about the practice and politics of ecological inequality, community initiatives which have developed to combat such inequality, and how environmental justice has emerged as a viable and powerful political movement. This course is useful to students interested in environment and public policy as well as racial and ethnic studies.

Full course description for Environmental Justice and Public Policy

An introduction to environmental science and the range of environmental issues that affect people on a global, local and personal level. Topics include sustainability, ecology, biodiversity, solid waste, water pollution, energy sources, air pollution, and climate change. Includes lab. The online version of this course requires students to purchase lab materials. Intended for general education students. Because college-level science courses contain extensive new terminology, many students find it helpful to take LING 111-Vocabulary Study prior to taking this course.

Full course description for Environmental Science

This course familiarizes students with characteristic works of nature writing by U.S. authors. While the course touches on fiction and poetry, emphasis is on major authors, themes and issues in creative nonfiction about the natural world from the beginnings of European settlement to the present. Topics covered include changes over time in American thinking and writing about nature; primitivism and the pastoral; the aesthetics of nature and nature writing; nature writing and spirituality, Romanticism, Modernism, and the natural world; anthrocentrism and biocentrism; ecofeminism; creation of point of view in description and nonfiction narrative; authorial tone and credibility; and the "prophetic tradition" in American nature writing.

Full course description for American Nature Writers