Environmental Humanities

The minor in Environmental Humanities introduces you to a vibrant interdisciplinary field, which explores urgent questions relating to sustainability, biodiversity, the climate crisis, and the role the Humanities can play in facilitating fair transitions.

Summary

Contents of the minor

What does it mean to be human in a time of global environmental crisis? How are political, social, and economic structures intertwined with the ecological realities of the Anthropocene? How do our conceptions of the human, nature, and the environment need to change in response to our current situation? How can we imagine sustainable futures? How can media, culture, and the arts foster environmental awareness and action? What is the role of science in accelerating sustainable transitions? What can the Humanities contribute to sustainable and fair transitions?

These questions are addressed in the emerging field of Environmental Humanities. This minor engages in developing new understandings of major environmental crises and the related social, political, and cultural challenges. 

We approach these questions through a sequence of four courses, each addressing the Anthropocene through a range of disciplinary perspectives. Questions of history, sustainability, ethics, narrative, by means of a focus on rhetoric, representation, and imagination are addressed in an interdisciplinary, engagement-oriented course design.

The minor leverages the expertise of colleagues from across the Faculty of Humanities and the Faculty of Geosciences, who belong to the Network for Environmental Humanities (NEH). The NEH brings together faculty, staff and students, and offers a supportive platform for engagement, enrichment and extension activities (including opportunities to organize and attend events, film screenings, excursions) complementary to the courses within the minor. All students enrolled in the minor are encouraged to join the Network for Environmental Humanities and warmly welcomed to the community.

Aims

The minor in Environmental Humanities seeks to equip you with the analytical and conceptual tools to engage productively with some of the most urgent problems facing our societies and shared planet today, both within and beyond the classroom. You will explore the present, past and future of key concepts within the Environmental Humanities. You will learn to draw connections and comparisons between diverse interdisciplinary approaches to environmental issues and identify how Humanities and other disciplinary perspectives contribute to our understanding of these issues and imagination of remedial actions.

You will develop a repertoire of conceptual and theoretical approaches to the study of environmental issues from diverse Humanities and Geoscience perspectives, and learn to engage critically with central concepts and positions in this debate, by conducting small-scale interdisciplinary research projects into specific case studies in the field of Environmental Humanities using appropriate theoretical concepts and research methods within an interdisciplinary field. Collaboration and teamwork are central to an interdisciplinary approach. Therefore, you will gain experience in collaborating across disciplinary boundaries and a better understanding of how diverse disciplinary perspectives can enrich research.

Matching Bachelor programmes

This minor represents a useful addition to almost every BA imaginable: it is open to all students who want to be involved in imagining sustainable, just and inclusive solutions, different to prolonged policies and economies that tend to focus on the next ‘technological fix’ of a broken, extractive system. 

Application and registration

How to register for this minor and its course modules, depends on whether you are a student of Utrecht University or not.

More information

If you wish to know more, or have questions about this minor, please contact the Student Desk Humanities.