Welcome to the Environmental Humanities program!
We offer students a path of study that explores the cultural dimensions of how humans relate to nature. If you wonder what art, history, faith, language, and ethics have to say about living responsibly, resiliently, and joyfully in our beautiful and vulnerable world, this is the minor for you.
What is the Environmental Humanities?
The Environmental Humanities is a multidisciplinary field that explores the entangled relationships between human culture and the wider material world. If the Environmental Sciences investigate the material factors that contribute to our ecological crisis, the Environmental Humanities explore, in transformative dialogue with the sciences, the aesthetic, imaginative, religious, and ethical components that not only drive our crisis but also provide us with the cultural tools to bring about healthy, flourishing futures.
Why Study Environmental Humanities?
If the Environmental Sciences can give us the vital information needed to understand what is happening to our planet, the Environmental Humanities asks: why? And how do we, as individuals and communities, respond? An EH minor will allow you to investigate the complex answers to these urgent questions across a wide variety of disciplinary practices.
It is also a versatile path of study that can prepare you for diverse callings, whether as a lawyer practicing environmental law, a national park historian preserving both local history and ecological resources , a community organizer working for food justice in urban communities, a climate scientist sharing your findings with audiences of non-specialists, a pastor preaching on creation care, or a novelist imagining sci-fi green utopias, to name just a few.
And no matter where life takes you, an EH minor provides you with the time, tools, and experiences to reflect on your own engagement with the planet in ways that can transform your everyday life.