New Course: Spring 2018

Robert Smithson, Spiral Jetty, 1970.

Environmental Perspectives: An Interdisciplinary Approach
A New 360-Degree Course
CIRC 3600 - Spring 2018
Professors Michelle Foa, Tom Sherry, Rich Campanella, and Laura McKinney
 
In this introductory class, we will examine how people in different times and places have viewed their relationship to their environment and how a better understanding of this relationship can help us address current and future environmental challenges.  The course is co-taught by four professors in the Departments of Art History, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Sociology, and a Geographer in the School of Architecture in order to address environmental questions and challenges from a multidisciplinary perspective.  No previous course work in any of these disciplines is required.  The art history portion of the class will explore the history of artists’ engagement with the environment and how their work reflects broader economic, political, and social developments underway.  The part of the course taught by the biologist will analyze the threats to biological diversity arising from climate change and a variety of solutions that humans are devising to address these challenges, while the sociology portion of the class will evaluate the complex connections between nature and social systems.  The section taught by the geographer will consist entirely of field trips to sites throughout the city and region in order to examine the complex environmental past, present, and future of New Orleans.  This course, then, offers students a unique and exciting opportunity to explore our relationship to the environment from a variety of disciplinary points of view.

For more information, please contact Prof. Michelle Foa (mfoa@tulane.edu).