Syllabi in Environment and Society
Short profiles of university and course syllabi, and collaborative syllabi projects on Environment and Society.
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environmentalism
“Radical Environmentalism’s Print History: From Earth First! to Wild Earth.”
In this essay (updated in 2019), Bron Taylor offers background about the events that gave rise to the Earth First! movement and reviews some of the watershed moments in its history, including its print publications.
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Amitav Ghosh in Munich: Inspirations, Insights, and Storytelling
In the fall of 2024, Amitav Ghosh visited the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society as part of the project “One Book—Many Worlds: Munich Reads Gun Island by Amitav Ghosh.” This exhibition emerges from the multifaceted discussion of climate change and its challenges conducted in the “One Book—Many Worlds” project and grapples with the question of the role of literary fiction in interdisciplinary academic exchange and climate communication beyond academia. Taking Amitav Ghosh’s recent writings on the global climate crisis, in particular the novel Gun Island, as a vantage point, the chapters in this exhibition engage with various aspects Gun Island from different disciplinary perspectives, drawing on storylines and narrative elements that allow a multifocal engagement with different social and ecological repercussions of climate change. Additionally, pieces from the spring 2025 taumelnd trauen, verschlungen bleiben student exhibition and winning and honorable mentions from the 2025 “Tell the Untold!” writing competition take the provocation to think creatively about the past and future of our environment and world further. Thereby, the exhibition chapters create a web of diverse thoughts on and readings of the role of storytelling for the contemporary interlinked social and environmental crises from a number of perspectives.
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“How We Got Here”
A brief history of the universe from the big bang to the Anthropocene, as related by someone older and wiser than all of it. A fable for clever beasts. A bedtime story for a species.
“Biocentrism & Revolutionary Ecology”
Judi Bari’s lecture on Revolutionary Ecology, with two songs at the outset, which illuminates her nature spirituality and biocentrism, her critiques of capitalism as inherently antithetical to environmental sustainability, and her strategic efforts to forge alliances between workers and environmentalists in defense of the redwood biome in Northern California.
“Dave Foreman at UW Oshkosh with Bron Taylor”
The lecture features environmental activist Dave Foreman, introduced by Bron Taylor at the University of Wisconsin–Oshkosh in 1990. The event situates Foreman’s ideas within the emerging discourse on radical environmentalism and its ethical foundations.
A Dialogue on Form, Knowledge, and Representation
Gregg Mitman and Rob Nixon challenge the rigidity of disciplinary boundaries, which restrict alternative ways of knowing the world.
Can Environmental Humanities Help Make a Better World?
In this piece, Paul Holm reflects on the relevance of environmental-humanities research in addressing contemporary environmental challenges.
Critique, Practice, and Ecologies of the Future: A Vision for Environmental Studies in the Humanities
In his essay, Edward Murphy encourages scholars of environmental studies to move beyond traditional confines of academic specialization and fragmentation.
In Praise of In- and Ill-Disciplinarity, Hybrid Vigor, and Porosity
This reflection illustrates how inter- and transdisciplinarity in the environmental humanities can operate in a transformative way.