Department WebsiteProgram Description
In the past decade, scholarship in the humanities has directed heightened attention to the relationships between cultural life (including the arts and literature) and the increasingly precarious biological and geophysical systems of our planet. The field of environmental humanities brings the methods of humanistic research and critical analysis to bear on such topics as energy consumption and extraction; fossil-fueled power regimes; species extinction; habitat degradation; endangerment of oceans, rivers, and marine life; and the use of captive animals for food and research. More broadly, this field excavates the histories and speculates on the futures of a climate-changed world. Although it is sponsored by the Department of Environmental Studies (in the Faculty of Arts and Science), the environmental humanities minor is a cross-departmental and cross-disciplinary initiative that integrates the curricular offerings of the home department with those of FAS humanities departments, Gallatin, Steinhardt, Tisch, Tandon, and NYU Global sites.
Students who declare the minor are paired with a faculty adviser and are given access to extensive job, internship, and career resources and events, both during their time at NYU and after graduation.
Minor Declaration and Advisement
To schedule an advising appointment and/or to declare a minor in environmental humanities, please contact environmental.humanities.advising@nyu.edu.
See Environmental Humanities Minor for other scheduling and declaration options.
Program Requirements
The minor in environmental humanities requires 16 credits from the list of pre-approved courses below, each completed with a grade of C or above (courses graded Pass/Fail cannot count toward the minor). Students must first earn a C or better in at least one introductory course before progressing to the remaining minor requirements, and at least two of the required four courses must be at the advanced level.
Course List
Course |
Title |
Credits |
| 8 |
| Ethics and Animals | |
| Animal Minds | |
| Literature and the Environment | |
| Literature and the Environment |
| Topics in AS: (Animals and American Empire) | |
| Environmental Anthropology | |
| Texts & Ideas: | |
| Environment & Society | |
| Animal Behavior for Compassionate Conservation | |
| Ethics & The Environment | |
| Ethics & The Environment |
| Environmental Justice & Inequality | |
| Topics in Environmental Values & Society (Governing Disaster) | |
| Introduction to Environmental Humanities | |
| Becoming Ecospheric: Embracing Life on a Damaged Planet | |
| Topics: (Minor Literatures: On the Politics of the Small, the Inconsequential, the Unheard, the Overlooked) | |
| History of Water | |
| Topics: (Energy and Geopolitics in the Era of Climate Change) | |
| What is Human Geography? | |
| Paper City: Examining Urban Bureaucracies Ethnographically | |
| NYC Coastlines: Past, Present, and Future | |
| Mapping the Americas | |
| 8 |
| Food, Animals, & The Environment | |
| Food, Animals, & The Environment |
| Topics in Animal Studies (Animal Stories) | |
| Tpcs Sem: (Climate Justice OR Environmental Archives) | |
| Microbial Cultures and Ecologies | |
| Climate and Society | |
Total Credits | 16 |
Policies
Program Policies
Policies Applying to the Minor
- With a minor adviser's prior approval, students may be able to take other relevant courses in the participating departments and programs (including topics courses) and count them toward the minor. The list of pre-approved courses will be expanded from time to time.
- Minors may take graduate-level environmental humanities courses with permission of the instructors, but at least two of the four courses for this minor must be taken at the undergraduate level in Arts and Science (-UA).
- No more than one course may be double-counted between the minor and any other degree, major, or second minor requirement.
- Courses taken Pass/Fail do not count toward the minor.
NYU Policies
University-wide policies can be found on the New York University Policy pages.
College of Arts and Science Policies
A full list of relevant academic policies can be found on the CAS Academic Policies page.