Undergraduate Academics
Environmental Studies
Environmental studies at Sarah Lawrence College is an engagement with human relationships to the environment through a variety of disciplines. Sarah Lawrence’s environmental studies program, a critical component of a liberal-arts education, is an intersection of knowledge making and questions about the environment that are based in the humanities, the arts, and the social and natural sciences. Sarah Lawrence students seeking to expand their knowledge of environmental studies are encouraged to explore the interconnections between disciplinary perspectives while developing areas of particular interest in greater depth. The environmental studies program seeks to develop students’ capacities for critical thought and analysis, applying theory to specific examples from Asia, Africa, and the Americas and making comparisons across geographic regions and historical moments.
Courses include environmental justice and politics, environmental history and economics, policy and development, property and the commons, environmental risk and the rhetoric of emerging threats, and cultural perspectives on nature, as well as courses in the natural sciences.
Students may participate in internships during the academic year or in rural and urban settings across the country and throughout the world during the summer. Guest study at Reed College (Portland, Oregon), the semester in environmental science at the Marine Biological Laboratory (Woods Hole, Massachusetts), and other programs are available to qualified Sarah Lawrence students. Vibrant connections across the faculty mean that students can craft distinctive competencies while building a broadly based knowledge of environmental issues, problems, policies, and possibilities.
Environmental Studies 2025-2026 Courses
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Open, Seminar—Fall | 5 credits
ENVI 3259
The climate crisis is no longer a distant threat; it is shaping the daily realities of cities around the world. In July 2025, unprecedented flash floods in central Texas killed more than 135 people and displaced thousands more, as the Guadalupe River surged more than 26 feet in under an hour. Just months earlier, in March, wildfires tore through Los Angeles, fueled by extreme drought and record-breaking winter heat. From New York to New Delhi, from the Hill Country to the Sahel, climate-related disasters are intensifying. Heatwaves, flooding, wildfires, and coastal erosion are accelerating, not only as isolated weather events but also as systemic, compounding threats to infrastructure, housing, public health, and human mobility. This course investigates how cities around the world are adapting to the growing pressures of climate change. We will explore a range of climate impacts and adaptation strategies: managed retreat from coastlines, floodplain buyouts, urban greening, migration planning, and resilient infrastructure design. We’ll examine how governments ranging from municipal agencies to international bodies are responding to displacement pressures and what it means to plan for mobility, not just mitigation. The conversation around climate adaptation increasingly demands that we consider social vulnerability, racial justice, and the lived experience of both sudden displacement and slow-onset change. Cities are now appointing heat officers, rewriting land-use codes, and confronting the limits of 20th-century infrastructure in a 21st-century emergency. Students will complete a hands-on, project-based conference project focused on climate and urban crises in a neighborhood of New York City or another global city. This course is open to students with a wide range of interests, including environmental studies, urban planning, engineering, public policy, geography, and sociology. Whether you’re an aspiring planner, designer, analyst, or advocate, you’ll leave with a deeper understanding of the challenges and possibilities facing global cities in a warming world.
Faculty
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Open, Small Lecture—Year | 2 credits
ENVI 2205
Note: Pass/Fail.
As the desire to engage in individual and collective efforts toward sustainable and climate-change mitigating solutions increases, this workshop offers an opportunity for students to explore the multiple ways in which “sustainability” can be fostered and developed at an institution like Sarah Lawrence College. Students will work in small groups on a variety of projects and produce research and educational material that can lead to concrete and actionable proposals for the College and our community to consider. Students will determine their own areas of interest and research, from energy and water-usage monitoring to composting solutions, recycling/reusing and consumer sobriety, landscaping choices, pollinators and natural diversity, food growing, natural and human history of the land, and community collaborations, to name a few. As part of their project efforts, students will engage with College administrators who are actively working toward sustainable solutions, as well as students, staff, and faculty groups such as the Warren Green vegetable garden, the Sarah Lawrence Interdisciplinary Collective on the Environment (SLICE), and the Sustainability Committee. We will also explore the possibility of writing grants in coordination with other actors at the College. Most of the course work will happen during class time. Skills in areas of any expertise are welcome, from environmental science to writing to visual and studio arts—but any interest in issues of sustainability and a strong sense of dedication will suffice.
Faculty
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Open, Seminar—Spring | 5 credits
ENVI 3116
Note: Same as ANTH 3116.
Throughout history, settler colonial and industrial extractive projects have displaced Native American and Indigenous peoples from their ancestral lands and instigated the environmental crises that plague our current world and threaten future survival. Indigenous peoples in the Americas and beyond have long been at the forefront of resistance movements against environmentally exploitative projects and engaged in an ongoing struggle that links Indigenous sovereignty with care for the natural world. In this interdisciplinary seminar, we will explore the humanistic concerns and ethics at stake regarding people’s role in ecosystems, our collective responsibility to protect the natural world, and the necessary work toward environmental and climate justice as intimately linked to Indigenous ecological knowledge, governance, and rights. This course will include readings on Native American and Indigenous oral history; land dispossession, displacement, and migration; ecological knowledge, practices, and biodiversity; decolonizing food systems, agriculture, and sustainability; health, medicine, and healing; resistance movements and social alliances; and the intersections of Indigenous sovereignty, climate change, and environmental justice. We will look to case studies covering topics such as the links between language and land in Arctic environmental education; regenerative food systems in New Zealand, Mexico, and Peru; the effects of oil drilling in Ecuador and uranium mining in Navajo country; and resistance movements like Standing Rock/NoDAPL. Our texts will include poetry, interviews, multimedia pieces, book chapters, and journal articles primarily authored by Indigenous scholars and artists. We will explore Indigenous knowledge and decolonizing approaches as we re-envision an ethical path to a sustainable future that integrates environmental protection with social justice.
Faculty
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Open, Small Lecture—Spring | 5 credits
ENVI 2120
Note: Closed to students who have taken Environmental Law and Justice (ENVI 3120).
This course will explore the intersection of environmental law, justice, and power in the United States, tracing how legal frameworks have shaped the distribution of environmental harms and protections across different communities. Focusing on both historical patterns and contemporary challenges, students will examine how environmental law functions as both a tool of justice and a mechanism of exclusion. In the first third of the course, we will focus on urban environmental justice, exploring how redlining, housing policy, and infrastructure planning have contributed to environmental inequality in cities. Topics will include access to clean air and water, waste siting, heat vulnerability, and disparities in exposure to pollution and green space. The second third will introduce key environmental statutes and legal principles, including the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), and Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA, Superfund). Students will analyze how these laws govern pollution, land use, and environmental review while critically assessing their ability to address structural injustice and unequal enforcement. The final third of the course will turn to energy systems, climate policy, and the emerging challenges of the energy transition. We will examine legal and environmental conflicts surrounding fossil-fuel infrastructure, lithium and mineral extraction, and renewable energy siting. Special attention will be paid to the legal and sovereignty struggles of Native American communities impacted by mining, pipelines, and nuclear waste. Students will engage with case law, policy analysis, and community-based struggles and will conduct a semester-long project focused on an environmental justice site or legal case. Fieldwork in industrial and postindustrial areas of New York City will provide a grounded perspective on the legal, social, and environmental dynamics of environmental injustice.
Faculty
The Center for the Urban River at Beczak (CURB), located on the shores of the Hudson River in downtown Yonkers, is Sarah Lawrence’s first academic research facility beyond the main campus.