Teaching
Starting September 2024 we offer a new and exiting interdisciplinary minor in Environmental Humanities, that explores urgent questions relating to sustainability, biodiversity, the climate crisis, and the role the Humanities can play in facilitating just transitions. More information about the Environmental Humanities minor will follow in May.
There are also a number of other exciting courses in Environmental Humanities on offer, at both bachelor and master level, taught by members of our network, at the Faculty of Humanities and beyond. Please browse the list below for individual courses.
Bachelor level
Block 1
Contemporary media are increasingly used not only to entertain, but also to persuade people, raising their awareness and changing or reinforcing their attitudes and behavior for the good of society. 'Green media' seek to contribute to ecological thought and to make people become ecological citizens. This course introduces students to key environmental issues as these are ariculated in computer games (ecogames, eco-modding), VR, social media, data visualizations, transmedia, film (art, Hollywood, science fiction, video essays), documentaries, television series and theatre. The underlying questions are: how can media address today’s environmental challenges? How do we conceptualize impact of (green) media from a media-comparative perspective? How can green media facilitate social change on a micro, meso and macro level? How do green media construct (playful forms of) civic engagement by positioning its users in medium-specific ways? What is the environmental impact of media production, distrubution and reception? Examining the ways in which green media can influence the public’s awareness of environmental issues, this course is a critical starting point for students researching and studying the growing field of green media studies as a subdiscipline within the environmental humanities.
- Course code: ME3V19001
- Coordinators: Joost Raessens, Stefan Werning
- BA Media en Cultuur (VP New Media and Digital Culture; VP Participatory Cultures: Civic Engagement in Media and Performance)
- Block: 1
- Level: 3
- Language: English
Block 2
Climate change, natural resource depletion and biodiversity loss are key challenges in our times and closely linked to processes of economic globalisation. The inevitably transnational nature of environmental problems has propelled a transformation of governance beyond the nation-state. Moreover, public and private actors have become increasingly involved in the performance of governance activities. This course historicizes the environment as an arena of global governance. Through the lens of the environment, it will explore the changing relationship between international organisations, state governments and non-state actors, such as (international) environmental organisations, multinational corporations and expert bodies, all of which have become major players in the global arena in the twentieth century. The course will also critically discuss the role of power asymmetries in general and the growing divide between the Global North and the Global South in particular when it comes to environmental and developmental interests.
International History and Environment is the fourth and final course within the minor International Relations. The minor offers students a comprehensive and in-depth introduction to International Relations and International History. This is done from both a historical and social science perspective. All four courses deal with historical backgrounds and contemporary political issues. IHE gives you the opportunity to study in-depth a specific arena within global governance that is highly topical. Concurrently, it allows you to explore and evaluate environmental governance as a function of historical trajectories and transnational interactions between local and global stakeholders.
- Course code: GE3V21030
- Coordinator: Joep Schenk, Liesbeth van de Grift
- BA History (Minor International Relations)
- Block 2
- Level: 3
- Language: English
What is the environment? What is the global climate or the weather? Many scientific disciplines devote themselves to the study of these phenomena, providing the building blocks for our knowledge of the earth as a planetary system. How did this come about? And how should we think about the various sciences of the earth?
This course applies a historical and philosophical perspective to the sciences of the earth—including ecology, geology, oceanography, meteorology, climate science, glaciology, and geography. To earth and climate science students, it provides an opportunity to reflect on fundamental questions about the practice of doing science, and on such critical topics as the dynamics between science and society or the nature of scientific expertise. To other students, it offers an introduction to a field that has had an outsize impact on the humanities and social sciences through data on climate change and the concept of the Anthropocene.
This course traces the traditions that gave rise to today’s earth sciences from the seventeenth century to the present, but also explores ways of knowing climate and environment in other times and places. Scientific knowledge of the planet draws on tangled histories of speculation and observation, collecting and classification, instrument making and model building. These sciences are shaped by social context, by field work and lab work, and by empire, exploitation and extraction. They range across different landscapes, from the deep sea up into the stratosphere. By reflecting on the ideas and circumstances that have shaped the sciences of the earth, students will learn to reflect on and position their own scientific or scholarly knowledge, both among other academic disciplines and within a wider societal context. Thus they gain critical skills in an era when the sciences of the earth have assumed a crucial role in debates both inside and outside academia.
The main goal of this course is to reflect historically and philosophically on the various sciences of the earth. Students learn to think critically about processes of knowledge production and about the role of science in society.
- Course code: BETA-B3CN
- Programme: Elective component in Liberal Arts and Sciences (LASB)
- Coordinators: Mathijs Boom, Robert-Jan Wille
- Block: 2
- Level: 3
- Language: English
Block 3
What are natural disasters? How have occurrences like floods, forest fires, droughts, volcanoes and earthquakes been experienced, interpreted and understood by the societies that experienced them? What types of explanations have been offered, and how have these aetiologies shaped societal and cultural responses to such events? This course will explore how societies in the past have prepared for and responded to natural disasters. We will consider resourceful adaptations to local environmental and geographic conditions, the rise of scientific expertise, colonial knowledge production, and humanitarian responses to unforeseen tragedy.
Furnished with analytical provocations from interdisciplinary thinkers including Naomi Klein, Rebecca Solnit, and Amartya Sen, we will consider case studies from different continents, and a range of historical periods, from ancient to contemporary. We will probe the extent to which it is still possible to talk of disasters as ‘natural.’ We will analyse a broad range of sources, literary, visual and material, from poetry and paintings to manga and maps, to interrogate the range of meanings ascribed to natural disasters, and the responses these have evoked. Forms of class participation will include role play and board games, as well as discussion and debate. Assessment will take the form of a portfolio presenting a case study of a historical disaster (including both collaborative and individually assessed elements), and an essay.
- Course code: GE2V23001
- Coordinator: Flora Roberts
- BA History, independent course
- Block 3
- Level: 2
- Language: English
On a global scale, wealth, health and life opportunities are unfairly distributed. Several philosophers have emphasised that this unfairness gives the affluent a moral duty to help the worst-off, others have tried to formulate basic principles for a fair society. Whereas political philosophers of the past mainly focused on these issues through the lens of the nation state, contemporary thinkers argue that globalisation processes force us to approach themes like sustainability, justice and equality on an international level, for example by constructing international institutions or by rethinking ideas about national sovereignty.
In this course, we will discuss a wide range of analyses of these issues by visiting core political theories of past and present and coupling these with debates on specific (applied) questions. We will focus on values as diverse as liberty, equality, (international) justice, sovereignty, sustainability and more, and critically discuss issues arising from phenomena like migration, climate change and poverty.
- Course code: FI2V0001
- Coordinator: Naomi van Steenbergen
- BA Filosofie (minor Ethics in Modern Society. Former code: FI3V19016)
- Block 3
- Level 2
- Language: English
The most important challenge of the coming decades is the need to craft a sustainable future. A sustainable future that is also just, desirable, and democratic. In this course, we connect technical and environmental questions around sustainability to social questions around equality, democracy, and participation – and show that these questions meet each other in our images of the future. What is a sustainable future? What do we think we know about the (sustainable) future? What can we know about the future? And who shapes our images and visions of and for the future? In the search for a sustainable future world, a world we want to live in, these questions are crucial. What we do in the present is always influenced by our expectations and aspirations. In the course Futuring for Sustainability, they are the central questions. In the course, we investigate sustainability from the perspective of the future, and try to understand how our images of the future can help (or hinder!) the sustainability transition. To do so, we look at how 'techniques of futuring', the practices we use to create ideas about the future, influence societal transformations towards sustainability. But what does a sustainable world look like? In what type of sustainable future would you want to live? How can we prepare and collaboratively create a sustainable world?
Our expectations about the future, and our dreams and imaginations for it, profoundly influence the way we act in the present. Visions of plausible, possible, or desirable futures are fundamentally important in shaping our social and environmental futures. For example, just think about the effects novels such as George Orwell’s 1984, films such as Back to the Future, and artistic styles such as Afrofuturism and steampunk have had on the way people feel about and prepare for the future. So too do unexpected downturns such as 9/11, the financial crisis, and the on-going C19 pandemic. But also think about the influence that climate projections and warnings about biodiversity loss have had on the way we act. Politics, society, and technology always rely on images of the future, on people acting based on their imaginations and expectations. In society, people and groups are also always actively trying to shape expectations and visions for the future. They are always trying to shape the future.
Drawing on a wide variety of literature, ranging from political science to urban planning to integrated assessment modelling, this course offers the Urban Futures Studio approach to shaping and creating visions for desirable sustainable futures. It also offers our interpretation of how to give those visions a social life, our take on making them affect processes in the real world.
Join us for an interactive course to learn to understand how techniques of futuring contribute to realising societal transformations towards sustainability: living well equitably within ecological means. Learn how to how people imagine alternative futures – and learn how to do so yourself. Understand futuring techniques including scenario planning, modeling, backcasting, experiential futuring, arts-based approaches, science fiction, and design. earn to understand where our current sustainability discourse comes from - and how 'the future' became an object of study. Lecturers from various disciplines will introduce what they deem to crucial insights for building a more sustainable future. This course builds your capacity to develop new visions and imaginations of possible futures and alternative sustainability pathways.
- Course code: GEO2-2427
- Coordinator: Jeroen Oomen
- BA Global Sustainability Science
- Block: 3
- Level: 2
- Language: English
Opkomende zoönosen, de klimaatcrisis, dalende biodiversiteit, het wereldwijde voedselvraagstuk en dierenrechten: de grote uitdagingen van dit moment hebben te maken met de relatie tussen dieren, mensen en het milieu. De keuzecursus Dieren en mensen in het Antropoceen onderzoekt deze relatie vanuit de langere termijn. Hoe veranderde de relatie tussen dieren, mensen en milieu door de tijd heen en in verschillende culturele en maatschappelijke contexten? Waar komen de grote hedendaagse problemen rond dieren en milieu vandaan en hoe kunnen we dat ontstaan begrijpen? De cursus geeft studenten een nieuwe kijk op onderwerpen zoals zieke dieren, dieren als hobby, dieren als voedsel, vegetarisme/veganisme, dierenbescherming, het Antropoceen, wilde dieren en dierenpolitiek, aan de hand van inspirerend werk van historici en andere geesteswetenschappers over dieren en milieu. De nadruk ligt op de moderne periode tussen 1800 en nu. De cursus wordt aangeboden vanuit de faculteit Diergeneeskunde, maar staat ook open voor studenten van andere faculteiten. Wel hebben diergeneeskundestudenten voorrang als er selectie nodig is. Er kunnen maximaal 25 studenten deelnemen.
- Course code: DB-K-DMA
- Course coordinator: Floor Haalboom
- Elective Veterinary Science
- Block 3
- Level: 3
- Language: Dutch
Block 4
Critical Ecologies examines the role of literature and cultural theory in imagining the relationship between humans, nonhumans, and the environment in an age of increasing environmental precarity. Focusing particularly on writing from the (post)colonial world, as well as non-Western and Indigenous thought concerning the entanglement of humans and nonhumans, we will consider how literature provides a means to imagine and articulate alternative narratives about the world and our place in it. We will engage with a range of narrative and poetic forms, which we will bring into conversation with key theories and concepts from fields such as ecocriticism, animal studies, and post-/decolonial studies, in order to explore issues relating to climate change, species extinction, environmental justice, sustainability, nonhuman agency, and indigenous cosmologies. How can literature help us to rethink the increasing precarity of earthly life and reshape the role of the human in planetary futures?
This course focuses on key concepts, theories, and debates at the intersection of ecocriticism and post-/decolonial theory. It aims to provide insight in and knowledge of the relationship between environmental and social change and its expression in works of art and literary texts.
- Course code: LI3V23001
- Coordinator: Kári Driscoll, Merve Tabur
- BA Literary Studies, VP World Literature
- Block: 4
- Level: 3
- Language: English
This course will examine the relation between human and non-human worlds as an enduring question in anthropology. We will explore diverse ideas relating to the themes of “nature”, wilderness, “natural resources”, animalities, the environment and the state, and ecological justice. Against the current global environmental crisis, in which both human and non-human futures are deeply entangled and endangered, we consider what critical tools anthropology may offer for rethinking ethics and politics beyond the human. This includes exploring the politics of marking distinctions between the human and the non-human, as well as engaging themes of access, equity and justice with an emphasis on colonialism, race and political economy. Guided by ethnographic analysis, our studies will be in conversation with explorations of nature and the non-human in neighboring disciplines like philosophy, cultural studies, literature, psychology and feminist science and technology studies (STS).
Some of the questions we consider include: what does it mean to be “human” in the anthropocene? How did human and non-human futures come to be so deeply entangled and endangered? How does one rethink ideas of the “difference” between the human and the non-human? How can we think of more-than-human compositions and assemblages?
By focusing on the long disciplinary engagement with non-human worlds and entities in anthropology, we hope to better equip students to devise independent research projects on themes in environmental anthropology.
- Course code: 202200003 [Social Sciences]
- Coordinator: Aditi Saraf
- Elective component in minor Citizenship, Identity and Globalization
- Block: 4
- Level: 3
- Language: English
No information available yet.
Offered from 2024-25 on every other year.
- Course code: ###
- Coordinators: Geert Buelens
- BA Literatuurwetenschap
- Block 4
- Level ###
- Language: Dutch
Master level
No information available yet.
- Course code: ###
- Course coordinator: Flora Roberts
- MA Cultural History and Heritage
- Block: 2
- Language: English
Many graduated historians work as policy makers within (semi)governmental organizations or the private sector. With this in mind, in this course students will acquire the basic skills necessary for policy making, with an explicit focus on the question what historians can contribute to (developing) policy regarding current societal issues. The theme of this course is sustainability, an issue future policy makers will have to deal with in one way or another. We understand sustainability to be social, economic, political, and environmental development, which fulfils the needs of the current generation without negatively affecting future generations. We will approach this topic historically and practically by first, studying how sustainability came to be on the political agenda during the past 150 years and second, gaining experience with practical skills needed for understanding and solving current sustainability issues. In this way, this course bridges the gap between theory and practice by showing how academic knowledge and skills can be applied in real life.
- Course code: GKMV22004
- Coordinators: Roberta Biasillo, Felix P. Meier zu Selhausen
- MA History of Politics and Society
- Block 2
- Level 2
- Language: English
No information available yet.
- Course code: ###
- Coordinator: Gertjan Plets
- MA Cultural History and Heritage
- Block: ###
- Language: English
Al decennia worden we gewaarschuwd voor de impact van de klimaatverandering, maar pas recentelijk heeft deze kwestie zich - als een crisis - in het hart van het maatschappelijke, politieke en culturele debat gemanifesteerd. Ook in de Nederlandse literatuur is ze op korte tijd uitgegroeid tot een centraal thema. In deze cursus analyseren we werken van onder meer Lieke Marsman, Annelies Verbeke en Dominique De Groen in het licht van deze ontwikkeling. We reconstrueren hoe in de naoorlogse Westerse cultuur over ecologische ontwrichting is gedacht en geschreven en bestuderen de literaire werken in het kader van theorievorming rond Eco criticism & het Antropoceen. We vragen ons ook af welke bijdrage de verschillende literaire genres (proza, poëzie, drama en non-fictie) kunnen hebben in processen van bewustwording en gedragsverandering.
- Course Code: TLMV20005
- Course Coordinator: ###
- MA Neerlandistiek; MA Literature Today; RMA Nederlandse Literatuur en Cultuur
- Language: Dutch
Note: from 2024 on this course will be called Making Climate and Environmental Knowledge
The climate crisis has forced “the environment” into every aspect of our existence. Knowledge of the climate and environment is present in our daily weather forecasts and our economic models; in our politics and our energy systems. Yet how we define things like “the climate” or “the environment,” and how we measure them has changed dramatically over the last centuries. Our way of knowing the Earth as a planetary system draws on a long and tangled history of speculation and observation, instrument making and model building, scientific politics and institutionalization, field work and lab work, empire and extraction. It is a history that ranges from deep mines up into outer space. Understanding that history allows us to better understand some of the challenges faced by today’s climate, environmental, and Earth scientists.
The aim of this course is to bring together students from the sciences and the humanities to delve into the history and philosophy of the sciences dealing with the “Earth system.” Collectively, we will explore new historical and philosophical perspectives; read about some of the most pressing issues in the field; and discuss how reflecting on the practice of science will help us make sense of our current predicament. To understand where we come from is to have a better sense of where we are going.
- Course code: FI-MHPSMCE
- Course coordinator: Mathijs Boom
- Block 4
- Level: MA
- Language: English