About the Theme
This question invites us to consider “representation” in both its political meaning and its aesthetic meaning. “Nature” is represented in paintings, poems, scripture, music, dancing, novels, laws, regulations, equations, activisms, advertising campaigns.
This question asks how environments—and often their relations to human concerns—are represented across media, geographic and cultural contexts, and different historical moments.
It invites us to self-reflexively ask how humanistic practices—especially artistic, scholarly, and pedagogical ones—have been sites of resource use and accumulation, and how experimental texts and events across many media and embodied performances might disrupt and re-envision those ecological entanglements.
The question invites us to look at “nature” again, go over its history as a concept and field of aesthetic and philosophical knowledge, to learn, perhaps, how to see and feel it differently in a moment of unfolding climate catastrophe.
Upcoming Events
Theme Courses for 2024-25
In addition to serving as the theme for Humanities Connect and the Humanities Fellows Program, there are also courses addressing the theme. Some of these are open to any student, and some are not. While we hope this list is useful to students (and advisors) in crafting plans for 2024-25, we also think it’s exciting to be able to see where this question is being asked, and we hope that seeing that gives us a new understanding of who we are, what we do, what we might yet do together.
AFST201 Rumours of War Seminar (Jillean McCommons) [AIHS, IFPE]
CLSC302 Roman Art & Archaeology (Elizabeth Baughan) [AIVP, FSVP]
CLSC329 The Ancient World in Cinema (Erika Damer) [AILT, IFWC, FSLT, IFWC]
CRWR313 Creative Nonfiction (Libby Gruner) [Prerequisites] [IFWC]
ENGL215 Reading Science Fiction & Fantasy (Kylie Korsnack) [AILT, FSLT, IFWC]
ENGL312 English Literature of the Romantic Movement (Thomas Manganaro) [Prerequisites] [AILT, IFWC]
ENGL325 Age of the American Renaissance (Kevin Pelletier) [Prerequisites]
ENGL330 Victorian Experiments in Fictional Form (Libby Gruner) [Prerequisites]
ENGL367 Indigenous Film in North America (Monika Siebert) [Prerequisites]
ENGL400 Indigenous Literature (Monika Siebert) [Senior Seminar]
FREN305 Writing in French through Literature and Culture (Sara Pappas) [Prerequisites] [IFWC]
FREN327 The Question of Modernity (Lidia Radi) [Prerequisites] [AILT, WC, FSLT]
FREN471 Francophone Studies (Kasongo Kapanga) [Prerequisites]
FYS100 Human/Nature (Nathan Snaza) [FYS, Endeavor]
FYS100 Dances for Everybody (Alicia Diaz) [FYS]
FYS100 Buckwheat & Caviar (Yvonne Howell) [FYS]
FYS100 Tao of Leadership (Jane Geaney) [FYS, Endeavor]
GEOG210 Planet Earth: People and Place (David Salisbury) [AISO, FSSA, IFPE]
GEOG250 What's Hot in the City? (Todd Lookingbill) [Endeavor] [FSNB]
GEOG333 Amazonia Connected (David Salisbury) [SSIR]
GEOG370 Global Climate Investment (Mary Finely-Brook) [Prerequistes]
HIST199 Maps, Indigenous Dispo in Latin America (Juan Ardila Falla) [AIHS, FSHT]
HIST260 Colonial Latin America (Juan Ardila Falla) [AIHS, FSHT]
HIST291 History of Public Health & Biomedicine in the Global South (Carol Summers) [AIHS, FSHT, IFPE]
HS101 Global Health (Kathryn Jacobsen, Nigel James)
HS331 Planetary Health (Jeremy Hoffman) [Prerequisites]
JOUR222 Turning Science into Stories (Karen Masterson) [IFWC, AILT]
LAIS332 Introduction to Latin American Literatures II (Mariela Méndez) [Prerequisites] [AILT, IFEB, FSLT]
LAIS432 True Lies: Fiction and Truth in Don Quijote [Prerequistites]
LAIS467 Stories Matter/Telling and Listening in Medicine (Karina Vasquez) [Prerequisites]
LDST210 Justice and Civil Society (Lauren Henley, Thad Williamson, Ekrem Mus) [Prerequisites] [IFPE]
LDST305 / PLSC379 Law, Native Sovereignty & Treaties (David Wilkins) [AIHS, IFPE]
LDST306 Sex, leadership, and the Evolution of Human Societies (Chris von Rueden)
LDST350 Killers & Cults (Lauren Henley) [AIHS, IFPE]|
LDST390 / SOC379 Leadership in the Digital Age (Bo Yun Park)
LLC335 Bombs, Bolsheviks, Ballet (Cultural History of the Soviet Union) (Yvonne Howell) [AIHS, FSHT]
MUS213 Recording, Transforming and Organizing Sound (Ben Broenin) [Prerequisites] [AIVP, FSVP]
PLSC362 Environmental Law and Policy (Chris Miller) [Prerequisites]
RELG206 Leadership Ethics: Early China (Jane Geaney) [AILT, FSLT]
RHCS353 Rhetoric and Law (Mari Lee Mifsud)
SUST101 Introduction to Sustainability (Rob Andrejewski and Daniel Hart)
THTR207 Text and Performance (Anne Van Gelder, Dorothy Holland) [AIVP, FSVP, IFEB]
THTR239 Latinx on Stage: From Barrio to Broadway (Patricia Herrera) [AIVP, FSVP, IFEB]
VMAP279 Documentary Art Media (Jeremy Drummond)
WGSS200 Intro to WGSS (Dorothy Holland, Julietta Singh) [AISO, FSSA, IFPE]
WGSS490 The Art of Friendship (Julietta Singh) [Senior Capstone]
