Environmental Humanities Minor
The Environmental Humanities Minor explores the complex relationships between nature, culture, and human expression. When we explore these relationships, we ask questions such as: What is the relationship between nature and culture? To what degree is this relationship culturally determined? How have people expressed this relationship through literature, philosophy, and other forms of cultural expression? How have our expectations concerning this relationship shaped our aesthetic assumptions, our environmental values, our cultural history, and our landscapes themselves? How does environmental understanding shape religious understanding, and vice versa? What do we believe is ‘right” or “true” about nature, or about the human relation to it? This minor explores these questions, each of which is integral to understanding more fully the ethical and cultural foundations of our current global environmental crisis.
Minor Requirements (15 credits):
- ENV-200: Nature and Culture: An Introduction to Environmental Studies (3 cr)
- REL-251.1 Theology & the Sciences (3 cr)
- PHI-340 Environmental Philosophy (3 cr)
- Two courses (6 credits) chosen from the following:
Student Learning Outcomes:
- Critical Thinking
- Analytic Reasoning
- Written and Oral Communication
- Problem Solving
- Demonstrated knowledge of the ways in which environmental attitudes shape culture and cultural assumptions shape the environment
- Ability to identify, describe, and analyze environmental values
- Familiarity with the literary history of environmental literature
- Understanding of the relationship between theological and scientific traditions in the western world
- Articulate the necessary interdisciplinarity of environmental issues