Environmental Studies

As we want to engage in individual and collective efforts toward sustainable and climate-change mitigating solutions, this workshop offers students the opportunity to explore the multiple ways in which “sustainability” can be fostered and developed at an institution like Sarah Lawrence College. Meeting once a week, 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 both 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/or community collaborations, to name a few. As part of their project effort, students will engage with college administrators who are actively working toward sustainable solutions, as well as with student, 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. This workshop will meet for 1.5 hours once a week; it is offered as pass/fail, based on both attendance and a group project that will mostly be developed during our meeting time. All skills and areas of expertise are welcome, from environmental science to writing and visual and studio arts, but any interest in issues of sustainability and a strong sense of dedication will suffice!

This interdisciplinary seminar in environmental studies and anthropology focuses on the interconnected social problems of migration and environmental crisis. Experts project that, in the coming decades, climate crisis will increasingly propel people to migrate as they flee extreme weather events and areas with depleted natural resources. As migrants in the Global South and in regions disproportionately affected by industrial extraction and environmental disaster face exceedingly untenable living conditions, both internal and international migration will continue to rise. While this prediction is often posed as a problem of the near future, displacement and forced migration are not new phenomena. Indeed, the close connections between industrial extractive economic projects, land dispossession, forced migration, and environmental crisis are evident in both past and present times. Through our course readings across environmental studies, anthropology, migration studies, and other relevant disciplines, we will focus on contemporary problems and their historical legacies to ask questions like: What is at stake for people impacted by climate change? How should we understand the relationship between environmental concerns and human mobility, both historically and now? What are the links between environmental racism, land rights, and migration? How might we analyze sociolegal processes, economic projects, and both local and international politics in relation to the natural world and the movement of people, problems, and ideas across borders? How does climate crisis affect particular groups, such as immigrants, Indigenous peoples, and other historically marginalized or disenfranchised communities? How might resistance movements focused on immigrant rights inform efforts toward climate justice, and vice versa? Our readings will address a wide variety of ethnographic contexts and geographic landscapes, taking us from the fishing villages of Ghana to the urban construction sites of Italy, from the highlands of Peru to the plains of Wyoming, from rural Yucatán to downtown San Francisco, and from Puerto Rico to New York, among other places. Students may opt to conduct original fieldwork or work with local organizations as part of their conference work for this course.

Native American and Indigenous peoples today protect 80 percent of the world’s biodiversity; and Indigenous ways of living in relation to the natural environment, in keeping with Indigenous ecological knowledge and practices, have sustained ecosystems for centuries. Yet, throughout history, settler colonial and industrial extractive projects have displaced native peoples and instigated the environmental crises that plague our current world and threaten our future survival. In response to these destructive incursions on their ancestral lands, Indigenous peoples in the Americas and beyond have long been at the forefront of resistance movements against environmentally exploitative projects and have engaged in an ongoing struggle that links Indigenous sovereignty with care for the natural world. In this interdisciplinary environmental studies and anthropology 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 our 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 and literature; land dispossession, displacement, and migration; ecological knowledge and practices; 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 explore Indigenous knowledge and decolonizing approaches, as we re-envision an ethical path to a sustainable future that integrates environmental protection with social justice. This course will fully participate in the spring 2024 Sarah Lawrence Interdisciplinary Collaborative on the Environment (SLICE) Mellon course cluster, with a focus on environmental and climate justice and a strong involvement with local organizations. The semester will include two interludes during which students will engage in collaborative projects across disciplines and in partnership with students from Bronx Community College. Students will have the opportunity to develop field-based conference projects.

Images wavered in the sunlit trim of appliances, something always moving, a brightness flying, so much to know in the world.—Don Delillo, Libra

A few cartoons lead to cataclysmic events in Europe. A photograph printed in a newspaper moves a solitary reader. A snapshot posted on the internet leads to dreams of fanciful places. Memories of a past year haunt us like ghosts. What each of these occurrences has in common is that they all entail the force of images in our lives, whether these images are visual or acoustic in nature, made by hand or machine, circulated by word of mouth, or simply imagined. In this seminar, we will consider the role that images play in the lives of people in various settings throughout the world. In delving into terrains at once actual and virtual, we will develop an understanding of how people throughout the world create, use, circulate, and perceive images and how such efforts tie into ideas and practices of sensory perception, time, memory, affect, imagination, sociality, history, politics, and personal and collective imaginings. Through these engagements, we will reflect on the fundamental human need for images, the complicated politics and ethics of images, aesthetic and cultural sensibilities, dynamics of time and memory, the intricate play between the actual and the imagined, and the circulation of digital images in an age of globalization. Readings will include a number of writings in anthropology, art history, philosophy, psychology, cultural studies, and critical theory. Images will be drawn from photographs, paintings, sculptures, drawings, films, videos, graffiti, religion, rituals, tattoos, inscriptions, novels, poems, road signs, advertisements, dreams, fantasies, phantasms, and any number of fabulations in the worlds in which we live and imagine.

Transnational migration, human-animal relations, and American community life are but a few of the cultural realities that anthropologists have effectively studied and written about. This is no easy task, given the substantial difficulties involved in understanding and portraying the concerns, activities, and lifeworlds other than one’s own. Despite these challenges, ethnographic writing is generally considered one of the best ways to convey a nuanced and contextually rich understanding of people’s experiences in life. To gain an informed sense of the methods, challenges, and benefits of ethnographic writing, students in this course will try their hands at a concerted work of ethnographic writing. Along with undertaking a series of ethnographic writing exercises, students will be encouraged to craft a fully-realized piece of ethnographic writing that conveys something of the features and dynamics of a particular world in lively, accurate, and comprehensive terms. Along the way, and with the help of anthropological writings that are either exceptional or experimental in nature, we will collectively think through some of the most important features of the craft of ethnographic writing from the use of field notes and interviews, the interlacing of theory and data, the author’s voice in ethnographic prose, and the ethical and political responsibilities that come with any attempt to understand and portray the lives of others. This seminar will work best for students who already have a rich body of ethnographic research materials to work with, such that they can quickly delve into the intricacies of writing about their chosen subject.

This interdisciplinary seminar in environmental studies and anthropology focuses on the interconnected social problems of migration and environmental crisis. Experts project that, in the coming decades, climate crisis will increasingly propel people to migrate, as they flee extreme weather events and areas with depleted natural resources. As migrants in the Global South and in regions disproportionately affected by industrial extraction and environmental disaster face exceedingly untenable living conditions, both internal and international migration will continue to rise. While this prediction is often posed as a problem of the near future, displacement and forced migration are not new phenomena. Indeed, the close connections between industrial extractive economic projects, land dispossession, forced migration, and environmental crisis are evident in both past and present times. Through our course readings across environmental studies, anthropology, migration studies, and other relevant disciplines, we will focus on contemporary problems and their historical legacies to ask questions like: What is at stake for people impacted by climate change? How should we understand the relationship between environmental concerns and human mobility, both historically and now? What are the links between environmental racism, land rights, and migration? How might we analyze sociolegal processes, economic projects, and both local and international politics in relation to the natural world and the movement of people, problems, and ideas across borders? How does climate crisis affect particular groups, such as immigrants, Indigenous peoples, and other historically marginalized or disenfranchised communities? How might resistance movements focused on immigrant rights inform efforts toward climate justice, and vice versa? Our readings will address a wide variety of ethnographic contexts and geographic landscapes, taking us from the fishing villages of Ghana to the urban construction sites of Italy, from the highlands of Peru to the plains of Wyoming, from rural Yucatán to downtown San Francisco, and from Puerto Rico to New York, among other places. Students may opt to conduct original fieldwork or work with local organizations as part of their conference work for this course.

Native American and Indigenous peoples today protect 80 percent of the world’s biodiversity; and Indigenous ways of living in relation to the natural environment, in keeping with Indigenous ecological knowledge and practices, have sustained ecosystems for centuries. Yet, throughout history, settler colonial and industrial extractive projects have displaced native peoples and instigated the environmental crises that plague our current world and threaten our future survival. In response to these destructive incursions on their ancestral lands, Indigenous peoples in the Americas and beyond have long been at the forefront of resistance movements against environmentally exploitative projects, engaged in an ongoing struggle that links Indigenous sovereignty with care for the natural world. In this interdisciplinary environmental studies and anthropology 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 our 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 and literature; land dispossession, displacement, and migration; ecological knowledge and practices; 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 explore Indigenous knowledge and decolonizing approaches as we re-envision an ethical path to a sustainable future that integrates environmental protection with social justice. This course will fully participate in the spring 2024 Sarah Lawrence Interdisciplinary Collaborative on the Environment (SLICE) Mellon course cluster, with a focus on environmental and climate justice and a strong involvement with local organizations. The semester will include two interludes during which students will engage in collaborative projects across disciplines and in partnership with students from Bronx Community College. Students will have the opportunity to develop field-based conference projects.

How have artists visualized the climate crisis from the vantage point of environmental justice? How can art help us understand the past and shape discourses for the future? This course looks closely at modern and contemporary art through the lenses of the environment, ecology, and climate justice. We will ask how Euro-American artists portrayed ideologies of settler colonialism through the genre of landscape and explore how Indigenous artists have defined place, land, and embodiment as counter histories to a dominant settler norm. We will take up the sanitization of enslavement through landscape painting and consider contemporary representations of reparative landscapes by Black artists working in the wake of enslavement, including artworks that engage the effects of climate crisis on BIPOC communities. We will look at the aesthetics and politics of representations of climate change and what it means to visualize petrochemical and extractivist sites and the communities impacted by them. We will consider artists engaging in forms of attention, slowness, indigenous futurity, and care work in dialogue with a Heimbold Gallery exhibition on climate justice and care. This course will fully participate in the spring 2024 Sarah Lawrence Interdisciplinary Collaborative on the Environment (SLICE) Mellon course cluster, with a focus on environmental and climate justice and a strong involvement with local organizations and field trips. The semester will include two interludes during which students will engage in collaborative projects across disciplines and in partnership with students from Bronx Community College. Conference projects will entail writing a long-form research paper or presenting your research in a digital humanities format.

What biological processes led to the development of the incredible diversity of life that we see on Earth today? The process of evolution, or a change in the inherited traits in a population over time, is fundamental to our understanding of biology and the history of life on Earth. This course will introduce students to the field of evolutionary biology. We will interpret evidence from the fossil record, molecular genetics, systematics, and empirical studies to deepen our understanding of evolutionary mechanisms. Topics covered include the genetic basis of evolution, phylogenetics, natural selection, adaptation, speciation, coevolution, and the evolution of behavior and life-history traits. Students will attend one weekly 90-minute lecture and one weekly 90-minute group conference where scientific papers in evolutionary biology will be discussed in small groups.

Behavior is the complex manifestation of multifaceted phenomena. Behavior involves the integration, synthesis, and sorting of vast amounts of biological information—from the molecular, cellular, and physiological to the cognitive, emotional, and psychological. Genetics, lived experience, embodied knowledge, and evolutionary legacy are all at play in the existence, persistence, and shaping of behavioral expression within and across lineages. Studying behavior provides insight into the interior lives of other animals and how they relate to and respond to their worlds, including a better understanding of their abilities to contend with environmental, social, and emotional challenges. Behavior can be studied at the level of the individual, group, and species. Studying animal behavior also provides awareness into our own species. In this course, we will explore the fascinating and complex world of other animals through the lens of behavior. We will begin to understand the relationship between nonhuman animal and human behavior, realizing that an understanding of human behavior depends to a large part on understanding nonhuman animals. We will develop skills to articulate the evolutionary history of a species’ behavior, the developmental history of an individual’s behavior, and the impact of evolution and development on natural selection. We will also investigate anthropogenic effects on animal behavior and begin to understand and articulate the ethical dilemmas posed when studying animals.

From gut flora of animals to fungi living in tree roots, symbioses are important and widespread throughout the natural world. We can broadly define symbiosis as different species living together in a close association of any nature, from mutualism to parasitism. In this seminar course, we will explore how symbioses are developed, maintained, and broken down and also consider the scientific challenges to understanding the function of such associations. We will read and discuss papers from the primary literature—exploring a broad range of taxonomic groups, including fungus-farming ants, bioluminescent bacteria living in squid, figs and their wasp pollinators, parasitic butterflies, and sloths and the moths that live in their fur. We will place a special emphasis on mutualisms, or interactions in which both partners benefit—unless, of course, one cheats. We will think carefully about how to design scientific experiments to understand the nature of symbioses and also design and carry out a class experiment on mutualisms between plants and nitrogen-fixing bacteria.

Ecology is a scientific discipline that studies interactions between living organisms and their environments, as well as processes governing how species are distributed, how they interact, and how nutrients and energy cycle through ecosystems. Ecologists might ask questions about how plant growth responds to climate change, how squirrel population size or behavior changes in response to acorn availability, or how nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorous cycle in rivers and streams. In this course, students will develop a strong foundational understanding of the science of ecology at the individual, population, community, and ecosystem scales. Throughout the course, emphasis will be placed on how carefully-designed experiments and data analysis can help us find predictable patterns despite the complexity of nature. Students will be expected to design and carry out a field experiment, either individually or in small groups. The course will include a weekly lab section, with most labs held outdoors.

We live in an increasingly human-dominated world where the places for wild animals are shrinking, causing animals to face an increasing number of threats and translating into populations, species, and ecosystems being in jeopardy. The modern conservation movement developed from concerns over the loss of wilderness and the extinction of species through exploitation. As a result, the well-being of individual wild animals has not been a focus of our conservation practices. Instead, we have tended to focus on the health of populations, preservation of species, and overall biodiversity. But in light of habitat loss, climate change, increased human-wildlife conflict, and the current global extinction crisis, we are wise to rethink how we care for wildlife and nature. While conservation biology and the science of animal well-being share a guiding ethic of the protection of animals, the presence of animal well-being has been slow to emerge in the field of conservation. Recent changes in our understanding of human activity on wildlife—such as overharvesting, pollution, climate change, and habitat loss, as well as the intensification of conservation programs—have necessitated a reevaluation of this separation. This course introduces students to the emerging fields of animal well-being science, compassionate conservation, conservation welfare, and wild-animal welfare. We will explore the shared and conflicting concerns of animal well-being and conservation from both historical and current perspectives. In doing so, we will examine these issues in popular media (film and press, for example) and academic (including scientific) literature. We will explore why some wild animals are considered pest species, why endangered species get special treatment (and if the animals of these species are better off), as well as the issue of keeping animals in zoos in the name of conservation. Major questions for the course will be: When we think about wildlife as individuals…how do our decisions on their behalf change? How do our conservation practices change? How does our relationship with wildlife change? Some topics that we will cover in this course include: human values and attitudes relating to conservation decision-making and norms of conservation practice; the role of science in conservation decisions; ethical questions in conservation practice; presuppositions about nature; human attitudes toward animals; perils of animals in the wild; and application of animal well-being science to conservation issues.

Ebola, smallpox, influenza, rabies...these and other viruses are the smallest lifeforms on Earth, yet they are some of the most powerful and devastating biological forces ever unleashed. Throughout human history, pandemics caused by viruses have periodically ravaged human populations, altering the social fabric, confounding political and medical responses, and revealing the fragility of the human species. Examples range from the Antonine Plague that killed five million people during the time of the Roman Empire, to the 15 million deaths during the Cocoliztli epidemic of the 1600s in Mexico and Central America, to the Spanish Flu pandemic of the early 20th century that claimed an estimated 50-100 million victims. The current COVID-19 pandemic has reminded the world of the dominance of viruses and exposed the challenges of confronting these microscopic pathogens on a global scale. This course will examine the biology and behavior of viruses, the role of such pathogens in inducing different pandemics throughout the course of history, and the means by which they can emerge and spread through a population. We will explore how viral outbreaks are traced through epidemiological means and modeling and how vaccines, quarantines, and other medical, social and political responses work to mitigate and eventually overcome such outbreaks. During the course, we will consider the representation of viruses and our response to pandemics through readings drawn from texts such as John Barry’s The Great Influenza, Laurie Garrett’s The Coming Plague, and Michael Lewis’s The Premonition.

Humans are bathing in a sea of microbes. Microbes coat our environments, live within our bodies, and perform functions both beneficial and detrimental to human well-being. This course will explore the biology of microorganisms, broadly defined as bacteria, archaea, viruses, single-celled eukaryotes, and fungi. We will study microbes at multiple scales, including the individual cell, the growing population, and populations interacting with one another or their environments. Microbial physiology, genetics, diversity, and ecology will be covered in depth. Particular emphasis will be given to the role of microbes that cause infectious disease in humans and microbes that play critical roles in ecological processes. Seminars will be supplemented by a weekly lab section to learn key microbiological techniques and methods, most notably culturing and identifying bacteria.

Everything that we eat, wear, and do involves chemistry. This yearlong course examines the chemistry of our everyday life—the way things work. The emphasis of this course is on understanding the everyday use of chemistry. We will introduce chemistry concepts with everyday examples, such as household chemicals and gasoline, that show how we already use chemistry and reveal why chemistry is important to us. We will concentrate on topics of current interest, such as environmental pollution, and the substances that we use in our daily lives and that affect our environment and us. We will emphasize practical applications of chemistry to issues involving food and nutrition. In this FYS course, we will have weekly one-on-one conferences for the fall semester and biweekly for the spring semester.

Organic chemistry is the study of chemical compounds whose molecules are based on a framework of carbon atoms, typically in combination with hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen. Despite this rather limited set of elements, there are more organic compounds known than there are compounds that do not contain carbon. Adding to the importance of organic chemistry is the fact that very many of the chemical compounds that make modern life possible—such as pharmaceuticals, pesticides, herbicides, plastics, pigments, and dyes—can be classed as organic. Organic chemistry, therefore, impacts many other scientific subjects; and knowledge of organic chemistry is essential for a detailed understanding of materials science, environmental science, molecular biology, and medicine. This course gives an overview of the structures, physical properties, and reactivity of organic compounds. We will see that organic compounds can be classified into families of similar compounds based upon certain groups of atoms that always behave in a similar manner no matter what molecule they are in. These functional groups will enable us to rationalize the vast number of reactions that organic reagents undergo. Topics covered in this course include: the types of bonding within organic molecules; fundamental concepts of organic reaction mechanisms (nucleophilic substitution, elimination, and electrophilic addition); the conformations and configurations of organic molecules; and the physical and chemical properties of alkanes, halogenoalkanes, alkenes, alkynes, and alcohols. In the laboratory section of the course, we will develop the techniques and skills required to synthesize, separate, purify, and identify organic compounds. Organic Chemistry is a key requirement for pre-med students and is strongly encouraged for all others who are interested in the biological and physical sciences.

In this course, we will explore the physical and chemical properties of additional families of organic molecules. The reactivity of aromatic compounds, aldehydes and ketones, carboxylic acids and their derivatives (acid chlorides, acid anhydrides, esters, and amides), enols and enolates, and amines will be discussed. We will also investigate the methods by which large, complicated molecules can be synthesized from simple starting materials. Modern methods of organic structural determination—such as mass spectrometry, 1H and 13C nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, and infrared spectroscopy—will also be introduced. In the laboratory section of this course, we will continue to develop the techniques and skills required to synthesize, separate, purify, and identify organic compounds. Organic Chemistry II is a key requirement for pre-med students and is strongly encouraged for all others who are interested in the biological and physical sciences.

Environmental pollution and climate change disproportionately impact people who are economically and politically powerless. Evidence shows that low-income and minority communities and people in the Global South tend to face higher levels of environmental pollution, have less protection from environmental and natural hazards, and suffer more losses caused by climate change. In this FYS, we will focus on the what, why, how, and what to do. What are the facts of environmental and climate injustice in developing countries, developed countries, and between developing and developed countries? Why is environmental and climate injustice happening? Why is focusing on climate and environmental justice important? How do the climate and environmental justice paradigms challenge the social, political, economic, and cultural structures of capitalism; for instance, corporate and elite environmentalism? How have corporations and governments responded to environmental and climate justice quests? Has the energy transition been fulfilling its promises? What remains to be done to make environmental and climate justice real? Along with discussing these pressing questions, the course will attempt to help you get familiar with and improve your skills that are essential for conducting independent research, analytical thinking and writing, and critical inquiry. This FYS will entail biweekly conference meetings, alternating with in-class, evidence-based group activities focusing on research and critical thinking.

The 2024 presidential election result will have far-reaching implications for economic, social, and environmental policies. It will also be significant in terms of the future of American democracy and the power of the Far Right. In this course, we will situate current economic and political challenges in a theoretical and historical context by drawing on insights from different schools of thought in economics, as well as from other disciplines such as law, politics, sociology, and history. Some of the key questions to be addressed are as follows: How can the central debates in political economy help us understand some of the unprecedented challenges that we face, such as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic; the climate crisis; and inequalities that intersect across class, race, and gender lines? Why is the study of history a central methodological concern for many economists, and why not so for others? Why do people distinguish between “regulation” and laissez-faire, and is this a false dichotomy? What is the history of industrial and social policy in the United States and other countries? How do we understand the role of political and corporate power and the “rule of law” in regard to market outcomes? These and others will be some of the questions that we will be tackling throughout the course of the year, thereby ensuring that students develop a solid understanding of the fundamental debates in economic theory and policy and see the key role of methodology in the study of political economy. Finally, the goal is to ensure that students develop the ability to critically engage scholarly work in economics. There will be weekly conferences for the first six weeks and biweekly conferences thereafter (at the discretion of the instructor).

The study of law is integral to the study of political economy. This fundamental premise is the point of departure for this course. While their politics were radically different, the British political economist Jeremy Bentham and historian E. P. Thompson both emphasized the centrality of law in society. Bentham stated: “Property and law are born together and die together. Before laws were made, there was no property; take away laws, and property ceases” (Bentham 1840, p. 139. Cited from Singer 2015, p. 15). On the basis of his historical work, Thompson concluded: “For I found that law did not keep politely to a ‘level’ but was at every bloody level; it was imbricated within the mode of production and productive relations themselves (as property rights, definitions of agrarian practice)…” (Thompson 1978, p. 96). Using the study of the subprime mortgage crisis of 2007/2008 as its point of departure, this course will discuss the relationship between law and money (which is, after all, a form of property), along with the nature and legal underpinnings of finance and financial crises. The course will deal with banking, central banking, the nature of public (sovereign) debt, and international money. As a course in the subdisciplines of law and economics, this class will introduce students to mainstream and critical approaches to both law and economics in regard to money, finance, markets, and globalization and will contrast the law and political economy framework with the conventional (or neoclassical) treatment of money and finance. It will be demonstrated throughout this course that core issues in law, such as those pertaining to property and contracts, are deeply embedded in all economic phenomena—including monetary ones.

This course focuses on the intersection of economic development and environmental and natural-resource management. We will focus on the unique environmental and natural-resource challenges faced by developing countries and seek to understand how economic-development goals can be achieved without sacrificing the economic and environmental well-being of future generations. We will bring together relevant theoretical and empirical insights obtained from environmental economics, ecological economics, political economy, and development studies. A sample of questions to be addressed in the course includes how the relationship between economic growth, demographic change and environmental pollution has evolved; how globalization distributes and redistributes environmental benefits and costs between the Global South and Global North; whether a Global Green New Deal can address both environmental sustainability and economic development; why developing countries suffer from the natural-resource curse; what local communities in developing countries can teach us about sustainable resource management; what property-right regimes work for sustainable development; and what renewable energy policies work for developing countries; etc.

The Earth’s climate has changed dramatically throughout its approximately 4.5 billion-year history, but the recent warming caused by human emissions of greenhouse gases poses a unique threat to humanity and many natural ecosystems. This course will cover the basic climate and Earth-system science needed to understand human-caused global warming. We will learn about the history of Earth’s climate and the diverse methods that scientists use to understand how it is changing. We will also explore current issues in climate-change science and how they are commonly miscommunicated or misrepresented in popular media. This course will meet as a weekly lecture with a weekly group conference.

Climate change is the greatest environmental challenge currently facing humanity. If allowed to continue unabated, its future impacts will be catastrophic for both natural ecosystems and human society. But while some climate change is “locked in” due to past greenhouse gas emissions, there is still time to develop infrastructure systems and environmental management policies to avoid many of the worst potential impacts. In this course, we will explore the concept of “ecological resilience” and how it can be applied to environmental management challenges such as climate change. We will learn about how natural and social scientists collaborate to develop projections of climate-changed futures, along with the science underlying climate-change mitigation and adaptation strategies. This course will meet as a weekly lecture with a weekly group conference. During group conference, students will have the opportunity to work together on a “visioning” project to develop a plausible scenario of a hopeful, climate-resilient future.

Geospatial data are information associated with locations on the surface of the Earth. These can include a variety of different types of data used in environmental science, such as sample collection locations at a field-study site, the areal extent of a forest biome, or the output generated by global climate models. The analysis of geospatial data also allows social scientists to identify disparities in access to natural resources or exposure to pollutants and hazards and has been critical to the study and practice of environmental justice. This course provides an introduction to foundational concepts in cartography and geostatistics, along with practical experience in geospatial data analysis using open source Geographic Information Systems software (QGIS). Although we will focus primarily on environmental applications, the skills learned in this course can be utilized in many natural and social-science disciplines—and can also help you avoid getting lost!

The global environmental movement of the past half-century coincided with a technological revolution that has allowed us to collect many types of new data about our planet. From remote data generated by satellites, to data generated by sensors operating under harsh environmental conditions, to crowdsourced observations submitted by the general public, environmental scientists now have access to a wealth of new information that can be used to better understand Earth systems and the ways that human activities impact our environment. In this seminar, we will explore a variety of types and formats of environmental data and their applications. Participating students will develop a foundation in scientific computing and data visualization using SciPy, a collection of open-source software packages in Python. We will also consider broader issues when using data in environmental science, including privacy, accessibility, communicating uncertainty, and ethics. Through conference work, students will design and implement an environmental data-analysis project focused on a topic of their choice.

As we want to engage in individual and collective efforts toward sustainable and climate-change mitigating solutions, this workshop offers students the opportunity to explore the multiple ways in which “sustainability” can be fostered and developed at an institution like Sarah Lawrence College. Meeting once a week, 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 both 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/or community collaborations, to name a few. As part of their project effort, students will engage with college administrators who are actively working toward sustainable solutions, as well as with student, 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. This workshop will meet for 1.5 hours once a week; it is offered as pass/fail, based on both attendance and a group project that will mostly be developed during our meeting time. All skills and areas of expertise are welcome, from environmental science to writing and visual and studio arts, but any interest in issues of sustainability and a strong sense of dedication will suffice!

Where does the food we eat come from? Why do some people have enough food to eat and others do not? Are there too many people for the world to feed? Who controls the world’s food? Will global food prices continue their recent rapid rise; and, if so, what will be the consequences? What are the environmental impacts of our food production systems? How do answers to these questions differ by place or by the person asking the question? How have they changed over time? This course will explore the following fundamental issue: the relationship between development and the environment—focusing, in particular, on agriculture and the production and consumption of food. The questions above often hinge on the contentious debate concerning population, natural resources, and the environment. Thus, we will begin by critically assessing the fundamental ideological positions and philosophical paradigms of “modernization,” as well as critical counterpoints that lie at the heart of this debate. Within this context of competing sets of philosophical assumptions concerning the population-resource debate, we will investigate the concept of “poverty” and the making of the Third World, access to food, hunger, grain production and food aid, agricultural productivity (the Green and Gene revolutions), biofuels, the role of transnational corporations (TNCs), the international division of labor, migration, globalization and global commodity chains, and the different strategies adopted by nation-states to “‘develop” natural resources and agricultural production. Through a historical investigation of environmental change and the biogeography of plant domestication and dispersal, we will look at the creation of indigenous, subsistence, peasant, plantation, collective, and commercial forms of agriculture. We will analyze the physical environment and ecology that help shape but rarely determine the organization of resource use and agriculture. Rather, through the dialectical rise of various political-economic systems such as feudalism, slavery, mercantilism, colonialism, capitalism, and socialism, we will study how humans have transformed the world’s environments. We will follow with studies of specific issues: technological change in food production; commercialization and industrialization of agriculture and the decline of the family farm; food and public health, culture, and family; land grabbing and food security; the role of markets and transnational corporations in transforming the environment; and the global environmental changes stemming from modern agriculture, dams, deforestation, grassland destruction, desertification, biodiversity loss, and the interrelationship with climate change. Case studies of particular regions and issues will be drawn from Africa, Latin America, Asia, Europe, and the United States. The final part of the course examines the restructuring of the global economy and its relation to emergent international laws and institutions regulating trade, the environment, agriculture, resource extraction treaties, the changing role of the state, and competing conceptualizations of territoriality and control. We will end with discussions of emergent local, regional, and transnational coalitions for food self-reliance and food sovereignty, alternative and community-supported agriculture, community-based resource-management systems, sustainable development, and grassroots movements for social and environmental justice. Films, multimedia materials, and distinguished guest lectures will be interspersed throughout the course. One farm/factory field trip is possible if funding/timing permits. The lecture participants may also take a leading role in a campus-wide event on “the climate crisis, food, and hunger,” tentatively planned for spring. Please mark your calendars when the dates are announced, as attendance for all of the above is required. Attendance and participation are also required at special guest lectures and film viewings in the Social Science Colloquium Series approximately once per month. The Web Board is an important part of the course. Regular required postings of short essays will be made here, as well as follow-up commentaries with your colleagues. There will be occasional short, in-class essays during the semester and a final exam at the end. Group conferences will focus on in-depth analysis of certain course topics and will include short prepared papers for debates, the debates themselves, and small-group discussions. You will prepare a poster project on a topic of your choice, related to the course, which will be presented at the end of the semester in group conference, as well as in a potential public session.

Despite widespread daily reporting on China’s rise to superpower status and both its challenge to and necessary partnership with the United States, what do we really know about the country? In this seminar, we will explore China’s evolving place in the world through political-economic integration and globalization processes. Throughout the seminar, we will compare China with other areas of the world within the context of the broader theoretical and thematic questions mentioned in detail below. We will consistently focus our efforts on reframing debates, both academic and in mass media, to enable new insights and analyses not only concerning China but also in terms of the major global questions—in theory, policy, and practice—of this particular historical moment. We will begin with an overview of contemporary China, discussing the unique aspects of China’s modern history and the changes and continuities from one era to the next. We will explore Revolutionary China and the subsequent socialist period to ground the seminar’s primary focus: post-1978 reform and transformation to the present day. Rooted in the questions of agrarian change and rural development, we will also study seismic shifts in urban and industrial form and China’s emergence as a global superpower on its way to becoming the world’s largest economy. We will analyze the complex intertwining of the environmental, political-economic, and sociocultural aspects of these processes as we interpret the geography of contemporary China. Using a variety of theoretical perspectives, we will analyze a series of contemporary global debates: Is there a fundamental conflict between the environment and rapid development? What is the role of the peasantry in the modern world? What is the impact of different forms of state power and practice? How does globalization shape China’s regional transformation? And, on the other hand, how does China’s global integration impact development in every other country and region of the world? Modern China provides immense opportunities for exploring key theoretical and substantive questions of our time. A product first and foremost of its own complex history, other nation-states and international actors and institutions—such as the World Bank, transnational corporations and civil society—have also heavily influenced China. The “China model” of rapid growth is widely debated in terms of its efficacy as a development pathway, yet it defies simple understandings and labels. Termed everything from neoliberalism, to market socialism, to authoritarian Keynesian capitalism, China is a model full of paradoxes and contradictions. Not least of these is China’s impact on global climate change. Other challenges include changing gender relations, rapid urbanization, and massive internal migration. In China today, contentious debates continue on land reform, the pros and cons of global market integration, the role of popular culture and the arts in society, how to define ethical behavior, the roots of China’s social movements—from Tian’anmen to contemporary widespread social unrest and discontent among workers, peasants, students, and intellectuals—and the meaning and potential resolution of minority conflicts in China’s hinterlands. Land and resource grabs in China and abroad are central to China’s rapid growth and role as an industrial platform for the world. But resulting social inequality and environmental degradation challenge the legitimacy of China’s leadership like never before—as recent protests in Hong Kong and elsewhere attest. The COVID pandemic and the state’s response has revealed new challenges to state legitimacy. As China borders many of the most volatile places in the contemporary world—and increasingly projects its power to the far corners of the planet and beyond—we will conclude our seminar with a discussion of global security issues, geopolitics, and potential scenarios for China’s future. Weekly selected readings, films, mass media, and books will be used to inform debate and discussion. A structured conference project will integrate closely with one of the diverse topics of the seminar. Some experience in the social sciences is desired but not required.

Why this course and speaker series/community conversations now? The rise of the New Right is a critically important phenomenon of our time, shaping politics, policies, practices, and daily life for everyone. The insurrection at the Capitol on January 6th, 2021, is only one egregious expression of long-term ideas and actions by a newly emboldened collective of right-wing ideologues. The violent challenges to the realities of a racially and ethnically diverse America is not a surprise. Nor is the normalization of White Power politics and ideas within mainstream politics and parties. The varied nature of the New Right’s participants—their ideologies, grievances, and goals—requires deep analysis of their historical roots, as well as their contemporary manifestations. The wide range of platforms and spaces for communicating hate, lies, and calls for violence against perceived enemies require their own responses, including the creation of platforms and spaces that offer analysis and alternatives. Seriously engaging the New Right, attempting to offer explanations for its rise, is key to challenging the authoritarian drift in our current political moment and its uncertain evolution and future. To do so requires our attention. It also requires a transdisciplinary approach, something inherent to our College and to geography as a discipline, be it political, economic, cultural, social, urban, historical, or environmental geography. The goal of this seminar, one that is accompanied by a planned facilitated speaker series and community conversations, is to build on work in geography and beyond and engage a wide array of thinkers from diverse disciplines and backgrounds, institutions, and organizations. In addition to teaching the course itself, my hope is that it can be a vehicle to engage our broader communities—at the College and in our region, as well as by reaching out to our widely dispersed, multigenerational alumni. Pairing the course with a subset of facilitated/moderated speaker series, live-streamed in collaboration with our Alumni office, offers the chance to bring these classroom conversations and contemporary and pressing course topics, grounded in diverse readings and student engagement, to a much wider audience and multiple communities. In this class, we will seek to understand the origins and rise of the New Right in the United States and elsewhere, as it has taken shape in the latter half of the 20th century to the present. We will seek to identify the origins of the New Right and what defines it; explore the varied geographies of the movement and its numerous strands; and identify the constituents of the contemporary right coalition. In addition, we will explore the actors and institutions that have played a role in the expansion of the New Right (e.g., courts, state and local governments, Tea Party, conservative think tanks, lawyers, media platforms, evangelical Christians, militias) and the issues that motivate the movement (e.g., anticommunism, immigration, environment, white supremacy/nationalism, voter suppression, neoliberal economic policies, antiglobalization, free speech). This is a reading-intensive, discussion-oriented, open, large seminar in which we will survey a broad sweep of the recent literature on the New Right. While the class focuses most specifically on the US context, conference papers based on international/comparative case studies are welcome. Students will be required to attend all associated talk and film viewings; write weekly essays and engage colleagues in conversation online the night before seminar; and write two short research papers that link the themes of the class with their own interests, creative products, research agenda, and/or political engagement. You will also do two associated creative projects/expressions. Transdisciplinary collaborative activities across the College and community are encouraged. Film, performance, written commentary, podcasts, workshops, and other forms of action can provide additional outlets for student creative projects and engagement.

In a global landscape pocked by genocide, wars of choice, piracy, and international terrorism, what good is international law? Can it mean anything without a global police force and a universal judiciary? Is “might makes right” the only law that works? Or is it true that “most states comply with most of their obligations most of the time”? These essential questions frame the contemporary practice of law across borders. This lecture provides an overview of international law—its doctrine, theory, and practice. The course addresses a wide range of issues, including the bases and norms of international law, the law of war, human-rights claims, domestic implementation of international norms, treaty interpretation, and state formation/succession.

As our societies and communities are starting to address the challenges of climate change, it is particularly important to explore the implications of the concept of “nature” in the Western and Judeo-Christian tradition that is dominant in the United States. In this class, we will look critically at this Western idea of nature by confronting it with representations of natural environments and the animal realm coming from Indigenous, African American, and Asian and Pacific Islander traditions. For example, comparing stories of world creation from Indigenous nations with narratives taken from the Bible and Greek and Roman classical texts will allow us to better grasp how language in the European tradition functions as a deep divider between humans and other living creatures. We will try to better understand how the romanticized conception of wilderness in America is in close relation to the presence of enslaved Black bodies on its land in addition to the erasure of the existence of Indigenous nations. Going in a different direction, we will analyze how contemporary feminism and gender studies provide crucially important models to invent a new way for the West to relate to nature. Animals will also be a focus of our discussions, from classical representations of animals as machines, to the use of models like the burrow imported from the animal realm by philosophers, to the possibility of shifting from a humanistic understanding of nature inherited from European Renaissance, to new forms of ecocentric expression. This class will take place in and outside the seminar classroom, as we will regularly observe nature on campus and engage in concrete projects such as growing herbs and vegetables. A few trips will allow us to explore local natural areas, including along the Hudson River. As part of this First-Year Studies class, students will be encouraged to work on personal projects that link the material seen in class to any personal interests that they have. This could be very concretely in relation to nature, plants, and wildlife on campus or as part of the work that local organizations around the College are developing on environmental issues and social justice. Other students may want to incorporate into their research elements of popular culture, such as horror movies, video games, or anime series such as Avatar. In addition to class, students will meet individually with their professor every other week. On alternating weeks, we will engage in group work related to sustainability on campus—including hands-on projects and gardening.

Variance, correlation coefficient, regression analysis, statistical significance, margin of error...you’ve heard these terms and other statistical phrases bantered about before, and you’ve seen them interspersed in news reports and research articles. But what do they mean? How are they used? And why are they so important? Serving as an introduction to the concepts, techniques, and reasoning central to the understanding of data, this lecture course focuses on the fundamental methods of statistical analysis used to gain insight into diverse areas of human interest. The use, misuse, and abuse of statistics will be the central focus of the course; specific topics of exploration will be drawn from experimental design theory, sampling theory, data analysis, and statistical inference. Applications will be considered in current events, business, psychology, politics, medicine, and many other areas of the natural and social sciences. Statistical (spreadsheet) software will be introduced and used extensively in this course, but no prior experience with the technology is assumed. Group conferences, conducted in workshop mode, will serve to reinforce student understanding of the course material. This lecture is recommended for anybody wishing to be a better-informed consumer of data and strongly recommended for those planning to pursue advanced undergraduate or graduate research in the natural sciences or social sciences. Enrolled students are expected to have an understanding of basic high-school algebra and plane coordinate geometry.

Food systems are deeply intertwined with climate change. On the one hand, industrial food production is a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. On the other, environmental degradation, decreased soil fertility, and increasingly unpredictable weather patterns are among the many factors that impact food systems around the world. This course explores the ways in which climate change and food systems are interwoven and the ethical implications that emerge from this entanglement. Topics of the course will intersect with the philosophy of food, animal ethics, environmental ethics, environmental justice, and global climate justice.

This reading seminar will consist of a close study of one book, A Thousand Plateaus, which was coauthored in 1980 by French philosopher Gilles Deleuze and psychoanalyst Felix Guattari.A Thousand Plateaus, the second volume of their magnum opus, Capitalism and Schizophrenia—the founding text of a movement of thought called “poststructuralism”—is among the most influential books of 20th-century philosophy. As its name suggests, the book presents a vision, or visions, of the world and of history as multilayered and multiplex rather than homogenous and linear. The book teaches us to look and to think of things and of ourselves from a variety of new and shifting angles, with the aim of providing means of resistance, empowerment, and sometimes escape against capitalism, fascism, and forces of normalization. To do this, Deleuze and Guattari draw on a broad range of philosophical, literary, and artistic texts and on modalities of experience that have traditionally been associated with madness. Their writing style is bold and dazzling, full to the brim with new terminologies (many of which have since become common tropes in the humanities and the social sciences); it is also challenging and dense. Engaging their work fruitfully requires a mind that is, like theirs, open and adventurous, willing to take risks and follow unpredictable turns. We will proceed in workshop fashion, reading 30-40 pages a week in advance of each class, writing short analyses throughout the semester, and coming to class prepared and eager to work together toward increased understanding. In addition to the prerequisite, students enrolling in this class should, more importantly, have a philosophical passion and commitment, a diligent work ethic, and a spirit of camaraderie, collaboration, and generosity.

What is humanity? What, if anything, makes us different from other modes of being, and what kind of responsibility do we have with respect to what is considered nonhuman? To broach these questions, this seminar will offer a critical survey of the history of Western philosophy with a focus on the development of humanism and subsequent critiques of it. Specifically, we will look at different ways in which the philosophical tradition defined the human being in contradistinction from, or relation to, nature. Texts will range from ancient philosophy (the Pre-Socratics, Plato, Aristotle), to modern philosophy (Descartes, Spinoza, Rousseau, Kant, Nietzsche), to recent developments (New Materialism, Eco-Feminism, philosophy of technology). This course will fully participate in the spring 2024 Sarah Lawrence Interdisciplinary Collaborative on the Environment (SLICE) Mellon course cluster. The semester will include two interludes during which students will engage in collaborative projects across disciplines and in partnership with students from Bronx Community College. Students will have the opportunity to develop field-based conference projects

This course explores the ways that narrative and creative expression can shape our ethical perspective on the world—particularly around ethical questions related to nature, nonhuman animals, environmental justice, and climate change. First-person narratives, novels and fiction, film, art, dance, and other creative expressions are significant for shaping the way that we understand ourselves and what it means to be in ethical relation with the world around us. Together, we will explore the ways in which these forms of expression shape ethical decision-making and ethical theory by centering values of care, reciprocity, community, and attention. This course will fully participate in the spring 2024 Sarah Lawrence Interdisciplinary Collaborative on the Environment (SLICE) Mellon course cluster, with a focus on environmental and climate justice and a strong involvement with local organizations. The semester will include two interludes during which students will engage in collaborative projects across disciplines and in partnership with students from Bronx Community College. Students will have the opportunity to develop field-based conference projects.

Calculus-based general physics is a standard course at most institutions; as such, this course will prepare you for more advanced work in the physical science, engineering, or health fields. The course will cover introductory classical mechanics, including kinematics, dynamics, momentum, energy, and gravity. Emphasis will be placed on scientific skills, including: problem-solving, development of physical intuition, scientific communication, use of technology, and development and execution of experiments. The best way to develop scientific skills is to practice the scientific process. We will focus on learning physics through discovering, testing, analyzing, and applying fundamental physics concepts in an interactive classroom, as well as in weekly laboratory meetings.

Calculus-based general physics is a standard course at most institutions; as such, this course will prepare you for more advanced work in the physical science, engineering, or health fields. The course will cover waves, geometric and wave optics, electrostatics, magnetostatics, and electrodynamics. We will use the exploration of the particle and wave properties of light to bookend our discussions and, ultimately, finish our exploration of classical physics with the hints of its incompleteness. Emphasis will be placed on scientific skills, including problem-solving, development of physical intuition, scientific communication, use of technology, and development and execution of experiments. The best way to develop scientific skills is to practice the scientific process. We will focus on learning physics through discovering, testing, analyzing, and applying fundamental physics concepts in an interactive classroom, as well as in weekly laboratory meetings.

The cry that “All politics is local!,” popularized in the 1990s, pointed out that voters were often motivated by matters of daily life rather than abstract national issues. Candidates could get more votes by creating jobs at the local factory, it claimed, than by ending a long-running war. In the present political environment, the phrase’s meaning has changed. Major national issues of the day—as wide-ranging as book bans, policing, and environmental protection—are themselves matters of local life and community survival. The questions they raise about morality and democracy no longer seem abstract but urgent. In this context, local political organizing has gained special importance as the site where moral struggles are playing out, often in quiet, long-running projects away from the news cameras. The seminar will take students inside the Westchester People’s Action Coalition (WESPAC) to study local politics and learn directly from organizers. How do local communities draw on larger national debates to build power and achieve change? How do organizers narrate local issues in terms of “abstract” values—like shared responsibility to each other, the planet, and the future—to campaign for policies that seek to change the way we live? Students will tailor much of this course to their interests, pursuing a conference project on one local issue area either working with WESPAC or independently. (Likely possibilities include racial justice, decarceration, police accountability, Indian Point, worker cooperatives, public banking, Middle East policy, and social-forum organizing.) If students choose, they may do some classwork on-site with WESPAC organizers.

This class is a hands-on introduction to conducting qualitative and quantitative psychological research on the intersection of race/ethnicity, gender, and sexuality. Although research is an indispensable part of scientific endeavors, the conduct of research itself is part scientific ritual and part art form. In this class, we will learn both the science and the art of conducting ethical research with diverse participants. What is the connection of race, sexuality, and gender within an American multicultural and multiethnic society? Is there a coherent, distinct, and continuous self existing within our postmodern, paradigmatic, etc. contexts? How is the sexual/racial/gendered implicated in the creation of this self-identity? Is there principled dynamic or developmental change in our concepts of self as human beings, sexual beings, and/or racial/ethnic beings? This course explores the analysis of race, ethnicity, and sexualities within psychology and the broader social sciences; how those constructs implicitly and explicitly inform psychological inquiry; and the effects of those constructs on the “psychology” of the individual in context. The course regularly moves beyond psychology to take a broader, social-science perspective on the issue of intersectionality.

The role of the environment is well recognized in shaping food-related health outcomes, especially among vulnerable populations. This course will take an interdisciplinary approach and introduce students to food-environment research in environmental psychology, geography, and public health. Utilizing social justice and antiracist lenses, this course takes a participatory approach to investigating some of the key issues guiding this area of research and action. Students will critically review literature on food environments, food security, and health inequalities and explore how modes of food production and distribution shape patterns of food availability in cities. Students will use photography and video to examine foods available in the neighborhoods where they spend time. They will also review media related to course themes in order to reflect on the ways that their own eating habits are influenced by the social and material settings of their day-to-day lives. The course concludes with students writing letters to the editor/op-eds to a news outlet of their choice, with suggestions about how to move forward with action to improve food security, public health, and social justice.

In April 2014, the residents of Flint, Michigan, noticed something was wrong with their water. Residents of the predominantly Black city reported discolored, putrid water that produced skin rashes and even hair loss. While city officials insisted that residents had nothing to be concerned about, further testing revealed high levels of lead and bacteria, the effects of which we will see for generations to come. Flint, Michigan, reignited a national conversation about the relationship of our physical environment, race, and social (dis)ability in the United States. These themes will be central to this yearlong lecture, which investigates several questions: What is the relationship between the physical environment and our bodies? How does environmental policy affect and produce social disabilities? How do built environments shape experiences of disabilities? We will discuss these questions using both historical and contemporary lenses. Our analysis begins with an exploration of the United States’ history of imperialism, segregation, and redlining to investigate how these endeavors have shaped its natural and built environment. We will then examine how the ghosts of these histories shape contemporary environmental policies and to what degree this legacy has produced different forms of social disability. Throughout these discussions, we will attend to several themes, including: how racial hierarchies shape environmental injustice, how our built environments both produce and shape experiences of marginalization, and how those experiences are addressed by communities of color and environmental justice movements. Throughout the year, group conferences will help students build and strengthen methodological skills. In the fall, students are expected to submit a research proposal, including: a topic related to an environmental issue of interest, corresponding research questions, and a review of relevant literature. In the spring, students will use their proposals to build a research portfolio that empirically and theoretically explores their topic. Portfolios should include an analysis of descriptive statistics, qualitative data of the student’s choosing, and an essay connecting findings to the lecture’s theoretical discussions.

In April 2014, the residents of Flint, Michigan, noticed that something was wrong with their water. Residents of the predominantly Black city reported discolored, putrid water that produced skin rashes and even hair loss. While city officials insisted that residents had nothing to be concerned about, further testing revealed high levels of lead and bacteria, the effects of which we will see for generations to come. Flint, Michigan, reignited a national conversation about the relationship between our physical environment, race, and social (dis)ability in the United States. These themes will be central to this yearlong lecture, which investigate several questions: What is the relationship between the physical environment and our bodies? How does environmental policy affect and produce social disabilities? How do built environments shape experiences of disabilities? We will discuss these questions using both historical and contemporary lenses. Our analysis begins with an exploration of the United States’ history of imperialism, segregation, and redlining to investigate how these endeavors have shaped its natural and built environment. We will then examine how the ghosts of these histories shape contemporary environmental policies and to what degree this legacy has produced different forms of social disability. Throughout these discussions, we will attend to several themes, including how racial hierarchies shape environmental injustice, how our built environments both produce and shape experiences of marginalization, and how those experiences are addressed by communities of color and environmental justice movements. Throughout the year, group conferences will help students build and strengthen methodological skills. In the fall, students are expected to submit a research proposal, including a topic related to an environmental issue of interest, corresponding research questions, and a review of relevant literature. In the spring, students will use their proposals to build a research portfolio that empirically and theoretically explores their topic. Portfolios should include an analysis of descriptive statistics, qualitative data of the student’s choosing, and an essay connecting findings to the lecture’s theoretical discussions.

The focus of this lecture will be to introduce students to the processes and methods of conducting sociological research projects using a transnational and/or comparative lens. We will be taking as our starting point a set of global themes—loosely categorized as human rights, culture, migration, health, climate, and development— through which we will try to build our understanding of inequality in various forms in different contexts. The approach we take here in designing research would be one that aims to move beyond the national or the nation-state as a bounded “container” of society and social issues; rather, we will aim at a better understanding of how different trends, processes, transformations, structures, and actors emerge and operate in globally and transnationally interconnected ways. For example, we can look at migration not simply through the lens of emigration/immigration to and from countries but also through the lens of flows and pathways that are structured via transnational relationships and circuits of remittances, exchanges, and dependencies. As part of group conferences, students will be asked to identify one of the key global themes through which they will examine issues of inequality, using a range of methods for data collection and analysis—datasets from international organizations, surveys, questionnaires, historical records, reports, and ethnographic accounts—that they will then compile into research portfolios produced as a group.

The focus of the seminar will be on questions of diversity, difference, and cosmopolitanism as it pertains to urban life in a contemporary American city such as Yonkers or New York City, as well as in urban societies around the world. We will take a sociological look at how urban communities experience, navigate, and transform social structures, relationships, and institutions in their everyday lives, as they deal with problems such as inequality, hate, and exclusion while coexisting with different and diverse populations. We will read books and essays by Arlie Hochschild, Asef Bayat, Yuval Noah Harari, Dina Neyeri, Robert Putnam, and others, as we explore ways in which cities embody histories as central while marginalizing others—and how communities and people in their everyday lives resist, alter, and decenter those histories and hierarchies. Through engaged field research, we will try to learn and understand how diverse communities of people work and live together; build and provide for the wider community; and rely on informal and formal opportunities, resources, and networks to make life in the city possible. This course aims to train students on the basics of fieldwork research and ethnography in urban settings, using a wide variety of transnationally oriented theoretical and methodological approaches. Our key thematic questions will revolve around issues of difference, diversity, and cosmopolitanism as understood through sociological lenses. By using in-depth, grounded, and deeply engaged approaches to fieldwork in the city of Yonkers and other urban areas where students live, work, or visit, we will seek to understand how communities of hyperdiversity and intense differences manage to cohabit and live together in cities and how communities deal with hate, prejudice, and structural marginalization in their everyday lives. Through grounded fieldwork, we will be able to gain a better picture of how local communities improvise and use informal means to make their everyday lives work in these spaces.

The concept of space will serve as the point of departure for this course. Space can be viewed in relation to the (human) body, social relations and social structures, and the physical environment. In this seminar, we will examine the material (social, political, and economic) and metaphorical (symbolic and representational) dimensions of spatial configurations in urban settings. In our analysis, we will address the historical and shifting connotations of urban space and urban life. We will then turn our attention to spatial relations within urban space(s). Here, emphasis will be placed on practices and processes whereby social “space” is created, gendered, re-visioned. “Space” will no longer be seen simply as physical space but also in terms of the construction of meanings that impact our use of, and relations in, both physical and social settings. While economic factors will continue to be of significance to our analysis, we will emphasize extra-economic relations and constructs—including power, gender, and sexuality. The focus will also shift, as the semester proceeds, from macro-analyses to an examination of everyday life, including the significance of public-private distinctions. In the latter part of the seminar, particular attention will be paid to attempts by scholars and activists to open up space both theoretically and concretely. Although the analytical questions at the core of this seminar lend themselves to an analysis of any city, our focus in class will be largely, although not exclusively, on New York City. Students are encouraged to examine the relevance of our readings to other spaces, including places in which they have lived. In their conference work, too, students may elect to study space and place making in contexts and with respect to themes that are of particular interest to them.

This is a course about sports as practice. "Practice" is used here in a multiple sense. As an embodied activity, sporting practice is felt and experienced in and through the body, which is its primary but not sole “habitus”—a term the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu elaborated upon in his use of the term “cultural capital.” Taking the sporting body and Bourdieu’s concept of habitus (taste, habits, skills, dispositions) as our point of departure, we will examine sports and their habitation of worlds that reach far beyond the individual (body) in both time and space. We will examine sports along various axes: as a collective and/or individuated activity; as a source of leisure and recreation; as a source of profitable employment; as a site of identity, as urban and nation-building projects; and as a space that engenders transnational mobilities and interconnections as well as ruptures. In its commoditized contemporary form, sports are more often than not controlled by big money and/or the state and are part and parcel of what Debord refers to as the “society of the spectacle,” a site of production, consumption, and entertainment. The complex relationship between sports as experienced through the body and as a set of disciplinary practices will allow us to think through the relation between the individual, the collective, and institutionalized powe—linking those to questions of body politics. Taking the internal dynamics and meaning of sports seriously, we will engage sports as a contradictory field, as both a productive space and a space of consumption. Our readings will include scholarly works, sports journalism, films, documentaries, and other primary sources. Possible conference topics include sports and politics; analysis of particular sports events (e.g., the Olympics, women’s basketball, the World Cup); (auto)biographies and/or oral histories of athletes; sports and protest; “fitness,” health, and the body; gender, race, sexuality, (dis)ability and sports; nationalism(s), national “styles,” and sports; and the phenomenology of sports.

By adopting creative reuse strategies in art-making practices, we can transform everyday objects, remnants, and trash into treasures. When researching a common object’s history, its use, circulation, and disposal, we see the devastating consequences of extractive practices and overconsumption on our planetary health. How can we, instead, use our junk and leftover scraps to hold memory, tell stories, and evoke regenerative possibilities? While salvaging and repurposing materials, students explore innovative ways to infuse personal meaning, cultural significance, and ecological urgency in their artwork. The course is structured around assignments, hands-on experimentation, research, and field trips. Students will develop a conference project that gives discards a second life.

How do we notice the traces of what’s no longer here? How do surfaces and forms bear the lingering presence of human use? This course will consider the artistic and philosophical concept of absence in its many forms: vanishing, dematerialization, disappearance, nothingness, forgetting, loss, and grief. Through lectures, readings, and studio exercises, we will experiment with multiple artistic and conceptual frameworks for bearing witness to acts of removal, erasure, and temporality. The class will explore how these strategies can, in fact, bring more visibility to suppressed bodies, histories, and ecologies. Some of the artists whose works we will consider include Gordon Matta-Clark, Félix González-Torres, Ana Mendieta, David Hammonds, Doris Salcedo, Rachel Whiteread, Walid Raad, Do Hoh Suh, Danh Võ, Janine Antoni, and Stephanie Syujuco, among others.

The course will guide students in navigating the complexity of working in the public realm. The class explores methodologies and precedents for how artists translate their concepts, research, materials, processes, and scale into proposals for public works that respond to the needs of place and community. How can your work be in direct dialogue with its surroundings—physically, historically, and metaphorically—to activate the site? How can art mobilize the public into civic engagement, social change, and ecological repair? Through intentionality, projects engage audiences in participation, collaboration, or even disruption. Students will propose and develop a conference project with regular feedback, critique, and support from faculty and peers.

In this FYS class, we will study the art, the mystery, and the power of poetry. In our first semester, we will learn to pay attention. We will become intimate with the skills of the art: with the sounds of sense, the way a word feels in the mouth, the where-it-is in a sentence (diction, syntax). We will wonder: What is a line of poetry? What part does silence play in a poem? How is poetry experienced out loud—or read silently to oneself? Why use a metaphor? How important are forms? How do we know when a poem is “finished”? How do we write into what we don’t know? We will read the work of many published poets. We will read essays, watch films, take field trips, and meet in weekly poetry dates and in conferences. You will write a poem every week and bring it to class to share; then, you will revise each poem that you bring. At the end of the first semester, you will collect your revised poems into a chapbook. Expect to spend a great deal of time every week reading the poems written by other people—both dead and living. Expect to read the poems of your class community. Expect to spend time dwelling with your own writing—without preoccupations. In our second semester, we will concentrate on ecopoetry, poetry that concerns itself with the living world and the current planetary emergency. We will read ecopoems in order to come to an understanding of the possibilities. Each of you will choose a topic to learn about (an animal? a river? a forest?) and write into that knowledge, into a new understanding. At the end of the second semester, you will collect your poems into a chapbook. We will create a community together of trust and care so that every writer feels free to share work. We will delight in each other’s voices, in reading together, in wandering into the power of poetry. And we will have a wonderful time. This course will have biweekly conferences. During conferences, we will check on your well-being, go over your recent poems and revisions, review your responses to your reading of weekly poetry packets, and take a look at your weekly observations.

This yearlong writing seminar will radically revise tropes of nature writing; i.e., the literature of the solitary white European male enraptured by his landscape, as well what constitutes writing the “outdoors,” “landscape,” and “nature.” As opposed to focusing entirely on the solitary, we will also think through the collective and collaborative, kinships with the nonhuman, the histories and ghosts of place. The first semester, we will be thinking and writing through radical acts of attention, as an ethics of life and art—sitting in a place and listening, including together outside, taking walks, meditating on the rhythms of the seasons, and thinking about fieldwork, history, and research when writing through place (including cities and suburbs). In the fall, we will read together poetic notebooks and collections, crossing genres—Etel Adnan’s Surge, Jenny Odell’s How to Do Nothing, Tove Jansson’s The Summer Book, Aisha Sabatini Sloan’s Borealis, Jazmina Barrera’s On Lighthouses, Lydia Davis’s The Cows, W. G. Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn. In the spring, we will continue to write through the problem of the person in time and space, reading prose that meditates on the ordinary and the daily, as well as concepts of carework and community—Marlen Haushofer’s speculative novel The Wall, Bhanu Kapil’s Ban en Banlieue, T. Fleischmann’s Time is a Thing a Body Moves Through, Renee Gladman’s Calamities, Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass. This course will fully participate in the spring 2024 Sarah Lawrence Interdisciplinary Collaborative on the Environment (SLICE) Mellon course cluster, with a focus on environmental and climate justice and a strong involvement with local organizations. The semester will include two interludes during which students will engage in collaborative projects across disciplines and in partnership with students from Bronx Community College. Students will have the opportunity to develop field-based conference projects.

This is a course for creative writers who are interested in exploring nonfiction as an art form. We will focus on reading and interpreting outside work—essays, articles, and journalism by some of our best writers—in order to understand what good nonfiction is and how it is created. During the first part of the semester, writing will be comprised mostly of exercises and short pieces aimed at putting into practice what is being illuminated in the readings; in the second half of the semester, students will create longer, formal essays to be presented in workshop.