Overview
Brianna Burke
Kwabena Edusei
Heather Kropp
Aaron Strong
Special Appointments
Elissa Johnson
Alma Lowry
Alicia Luhrrsen-Zombek
Program Committee
Aaron Strong (Environmental Studies), director
Cat Beck (Geoscience)
Stephanie Dhuman (Sociology)
Rebecca Gruskin (History)
Peter Guiden (Biology)
Carolyn Hutchinson (Chemistry)
Heather Kropp (Environmental Studies)
Hannah Lau (Anthropology)
Onno Oerlemans (Literature)
The goals of the Hamilton College Environmental Studies Program are to provide students with the knowledge, skills, and interdisciplinary perspectives to understand the causes and consequences of, as well as potential solutions to, the world’s pressing environmental challenges, and to enable them to become environmentally conscious citizens.
Students will learn to:
- Explain the causes of, impacts of, and potential solutions to climate change
- Analyze how history, power, and identity shape environmental justice
- Apply appropriate research methods to answer a research question about a pressing environmental problem
This interdisciplinary program includes its own faculty and is also supported by contributions of faculty members from a number of other departments.
The Concentration in Environmental Studies
The Environmental Studies concentration consists of 11 courses: 4 required core courses, 4 foundational breadth courses, and 3 electives, and the Senior Program.
There are four core required courses for concentrators: ENVST-110 Intro to Environmental Studies, ENVST-206 Introduction to Environmental Data, ENVST-212 Climate Change, and ENVST-234 Environmental Justice. These are normally taken in the first or second year. ENVST-234 fulfills the Social Structural and Institutional Hierarchies requirement for the concentration.
Students are required to fulfill four breadth requirements by selecting ONE course from each of the following two categories. 1. Earth Science: Any 100-Level Geoscience course; 2. Life Science: Any BIO-100 course or CHEM-120; and any TWO courses from the following category 3. Environmental Social Sciences and Humanities: ENVST-285 Environmental Politics, ENVST-204 Environmental Social Movements, ENVST-287 Environmental Political Theory, ENVST-290 Nature and Technology, , ANTHRO-272 Anthropology of Food, ARTH-302 Architecture and Environment, ECON-380: Environmental Economics, ENVST-218: Landscape: People, Place and Past, ENVST-266: Global Environmental History, ENVST-255: Gender and the Environment, LIT-267: Literature and the Environment, PHIL-235: Environmental Ethics. We strongly recommend that at least two foundational breadth courses should be taken during the first year: an introductory (100-level) Geosciences course and Biology-100/CHEM-120.
All concentrators must also take three electives from the approved list below of ENVST and other environmentally related courses. Upon declaring their concentration, students should meet with their concentration advisor to discuss a focal area of study to help guide the selection of elective courses in the major. Students are encouraged to align their electives thematically around a topic, but the requirement is simply three courses from the list.
• No more than one 100 level course
• At least one 300 level course
• May include up to TWO transfers from study abroad programs.
• Additional foundational course options for Environmental Social Sciences and Environmental Humanities listed above CAN be counted as electives toward the major
Approved ENVST Electives
Note: Courses not appearing on this list but which were previously designated ENVST at the time that the student took them will count as electives.
ENVST-155/RELST-155 Religion and the Wild
ENVST-151/HIST-151 A Global History of Oil
ENVST-160 Carbon Footprints and Sustainability
ENVST-218/ARCH-218 Resilience and Collapse
ENVST-220 Forever Wild: Culture and History of the Adirondack Park
ENVST-222 Environmental Spatial Analysis
ENVST-224 Environmental Futures
ENVST-237 Intro to the Science of Food
ENVST-239 Seed to Gut: Regenerative Agriculture
ENVST-258/HIST-258 Environmental History of Middle East and North Africa
ENVST-255/WMGST-255 Labor, Gender and the Environment
ENVST-265/LIT-265 North American Indigenous Literature
ENVST-266/HIST-266 Global Environmental History
ENVST-269/LIT-269 Climate Fiction and Film
ENVST-285/GOVT-285 Introduction to Environmental Politics
ENVST-287/GOVT-287 Political Theory and the Environment
ENVST-290 Nature and Technology
ENVST-302/ARTH-302. Architecture and the Environment
ENVST-305 Climate Risk and Resilience
ENVST-310/AMST-310 Seminar: Indigenous Ecologies
ENVST-313/HIST-313 Agriculture and Empire in the Global South
ENVST-317 Global Wildlife Trade
ENVST-318 Environment and Natural Resource Conflict
ENVST-320 Renewable Energy Systems
ENVST-325 Environmental Data Science
ENVST-335 Environmental Justice and Soundscape
ENVST-340 Changing Arctic Ecosystems
ENVST-352/LIT-352 Blue Humanities
ENVST-355/HIST-355 Bioprospecting and the Ecologies of Medicine
ENVST-360/GOVT-360 Politics and Theory of Place and Space
ENVST-335 Environmental Justice and Soundscape
ENVST-380 Community Engaged Communication
ENVST-392/LIT-392 Decolonizing the Anthropocene
ENVST-393/LIT-393 Multispecies Kinship
ANTHR-272 Anthropology of Food
ANTHR-412 Food Justice in the Mohawk Valley
BIO-213 Marine Ecology
BIO-237 Ecology
BIO-250 Biodiversity
BIO-260 Geomicrobiology
BIO-419 Life and the Seasons
BIO-427 Animal Behavior and Disease
CHEM-263 Quantitative Environmental Chemistry
ECON-380 Environmental Economics
ECON-417 Topics in Environmental Economics
GEOSC-209 Hydrogeology
GEOSC-211 Paleoenvironmental Reconstruction
GEOSC-227 The East African Rift System
GEOSC-235 Volcanoes, Climate, and Resources
GEOSC-236 Soils and the Environment
GEOSC-240 Meteorology
GEOSC-250 Seminar of the Geology of the Desert SW
GEOSC-290/BIO-290 Paleontology
GEOSC-291 Field Studies in the Desert Southwest
GEOSC-314 Geophysics
GEOSC-380 GIS for Geoscientists
HIST-225 Scientific Revolutions
HIST-253 Environment and Capitalism
LIT-260 Human Identity in the Natural World
LIT-267 Literature and the Environment
LIT-268/ARBC-268 Petrofictions
PHIL-221 Philosophy of Food
PHIL-235 Environmental Ethics
SOC-338 Environmental Racism
The following courses may no longer be offered on a regular basis but count as Environmental Studies electives:
ENVST-158/HIST-158 Climate and Migration
ENVST-203/CLSC-203 Putting Down Roots: Environmental Approaches to Classical Antiquity
ENVST-204 Environmental Social Movements
ENVST-235 Globalization and Agriculture
ENVST-271/ASNST-271 Mother Nature
ENVST-307/HIST-307 Environment and Technology in Africa
ENVST-315 Examining Rurality
ENVST-323 Queer Feminist Climate Justice
ENVST-338 Coastal Ecosystems and Food Security
BIO-226 Wetland Ecology and Conservation
FRNCH-326 Ecocritique: Environmental French Literature
GOVT-286 Environmental Policy and Economics
The Senior Program in Environmental Studies is fulfilled through one of two options
• Option 1: ENVST-520 Senior Practicum Capstone
• Option 2: Senior Thesis Comprising ENVST-549 (Fall) and ENVST-550 (Spring)
Honors: Students who have earned at least a 3.5 average in courses toward the concentration may receive honors in Environmental Studies through distinguished work on the Senior Project – either the capstone or the senior thesis.
Minor in Environmental Studies
For the Class of 2024 and Class of 2025, there are two options for the minor in Environmental studies:
• The minor can consist of five courses: ENVST-110, one 100-level GEOSC course, and three other ENVST Core or Elective courses, with at least one of those a 300-level course, OR
• The minor can consist of any five courses from the Core, Breadth, or Elective lists, with only one total 100-level course.
Starting with the Class of 2026, the minor in Environmental Studies consists of any five courses from the Environmental Studies Core, Breadth, or Elective lists. Only one 100-level course may be counted toward the minor.