Graduate Fall 2021

FALL 2021 GRADUATE COURSES 

(CLICK HERE FOR ILLUSTRATED PDF OF FALL 2021 UNDERGRADUATE AND GRADUATE COURSES)

Classes are listed alphabetically according to their first department listing. For the most up-to-date listings, check the Yale Course Search  website. ​To add or remove a course from this list, email environmentalhumanities@yale.edu

AFST 836 (10512) /HIST 836

Histories of Postcolonial Africa: Themes, Genres, and the Phantoms of the Archive

Benedito Machava

T 1:30pm-3:20pm

This course is both historiographic and methodological. It is meant as an introduction to the major themes that have dominated the study of postcolonial Africa in recent years, and the material circumstances in which they were produced. We pay close attention to the kinds of sources and archives that scholars have employed in their works, and how they addressed the challenges of writing contemporary histories in Africa. We center our weekly meetings around one key text and one or two supplementary readings. We engage with works on politics, violence, environment and technology, women and gender, affect, fashion, leisure, and popular culture.


AFST 839 (10511) /HIST 839 

Environmental History of Africa

Robert Harms

W 9:25am-11:15am
An examination of the interaction between people and their environment in Africa and the ways in which this interaction has affected or shaped the course of African history.


AMST 856 (10082)

American Mobilities

Laura Barraclough
Th 9:25am-11:15am
The “mobilities turn,” developed primarily in the social sciences since the early 2000s, examines the structured movements of people, ideas, and things; the transportation and communication infrastructures that move them; and the cultural meanings attributed to mobility and immobility. This course integrates critical mobilities scholarship with American Studies and adjacent fields to consider the significance of (im)mobilities for the evolution of American history, geographies, society, and culture. Our focus is on American (im)mobilities and mobility justice in relationship to settler colonialism, racism, and capitalism in a variety of regions and from the seventeeth century to the present.


ANTH 541 (10089) /PLSC 779/HIST 965/ENV 836

Agrarian Societies: Culture, Society, History, and Development
Kalyanakrishnan Sivaramakrishnan, Marcela Echeverri Munoz
W 1:30pm-3:20pm
An interdisciplinary examination of agrarian societies, contemporary and historical, Western and non-Western. Major analytical perspectives from anthropology, economics, history, political science, and environmental studies are used to develop a meaning-centered and historically grounded account of the transformations of rural society. Team-taught.


ANTH 581 (13140) / ENV 759

Power, Knowledge, and the Environment: Social Science Theory and Method

Michael Dove

M 1pm-3:50pm

Course on the social scientific contributions to environmental and natural resource issues, emphasizing equity, politics, and knowledge. Section I, introduction to the course. Section II, disaster and environmental perturbation: the social science of emerging diseases; and the social origins of disaster. Section III, boundaries: cost and benefit in the Green Revolution; riverine restoration; and aspirational infrastructure. Section IV, methods: working within development projects, and rapid appraisal and consultancies. Section V, local communities, resources, and (under)development: representing the poor, development discourse, and indigenous peoples and knowledge. This is a core M.E.M. specialization course in YSE and a core course in the combined YSE/Anthropology doctoral degree program. Enrollment capped.


ANTH 963 (10510) /HIST 963/HSHM 691/HSAR 841
Topics in the Environmental Humanities
Kalyanakrishnan Sivaramakrishnan, Paul Sabin
Th 5:30pm-7:20pm
This is the required workshop for the Graduate Certificate in Environmental Humanities. The workshop meets six times per term to explore concepts, methods, and pedagogy in the environmental humanities, and to share student and faculty research. Each student pursuing the Graduate Certificate in Environmental Humanities must complete both a fall term and a spring term of the workshop, but the two terms of student participation need not be consecutive. The fall term each year emphasizes key concepts and major intellectual currents. The spring term each year emphasizes pedagogy, methods, and public practice. Specific topics vary each year. Students who have previously enrolled in the course may audit the course in 

a subsequent year.


ARCH 2242 (13282)

Slavery, Its Legacies, and the Built Environment

Phillip Bernstein, Luis C. deBaca

W 3:15-6:30pm

This collaboration of the Law School and School of Architecture is taught in conjunction with the University of Michigan Law School’s Problem Solving Initiative. The course examines the legal and social impact of modern and historic forms of slavery and involuntary servitude. Drawing from the disciplines of law, history, land use, architecture, and others, student teams assemble a final portfolio that will inform a spring 2022 School of Architecture studio course that will design a national slavery memorial on the Washington, D.C., waterfront. This course satisfies the ABA Experiential Learning 


ARCH 1247 (13207)

Animal Houses

Katherine Davies

W 11am-12:50

The course studies the nature of animal occupation on Earth, then focuses on a method or system of occupation by a single species. Species selection and methods of representation are governed by individual interests based on an introductory series of exercises focused on the primary categories of land, sea, and air. Work is realized in the form of visualizations that collect and re-present discoveries. Given the nature of the research, visualizations push the boundaries of traditional and contemporary architectural drawings and imagery by incorporating process, time, and material reconstitution into the presentation of spatial language. The seminar allows for in-depth individual research and practice in the transformation of information. Understanding the material nature of occupied space, the research further allows for an expanded understanding of alternate building practice and methodologies.


ARCH 2021 (13209)

Environmental Design

Anna Dyson, Mohamed Aly Etman

MF 11am-12:50pm

(Required of second-year M.Arch. I students.) This course examines the fundamental scientific principles governing the thermal, luminous, and acoustic environments of buildings, and introduces students to the methods and technologies for creating and controlling the interior environment. Beginning with an overview of the laws of thermodynamics and the principles of heat transfer, the course investigates the application of these principles in the determination of building behavior, and explores the design variables, including climate, for mitigating that behavior. The basic characteristics of HVAC systems are discussed, as are alternative systems such as natural ventilation. The second half of the term draws on the basic laws of physics for optics and sound and examines the application of these laws in creating the visual and auditory environments of a building. Material properties are explored in detail, and students are exposed to the various technologies for producing and controlling light, from daylighting to fiber optics. The overarching premise of the course is that the understanding and application of the physical principles by the architect must respond to and address the larger issues surrounding energy and the environment at multiple scales and in domains beyond a single building. The course is presented in a lecture format. Homework, computational labs, design projects, short quizzes, and a final exam are required.


ARCH 3302 (13295)

Tall Tales

Ife Vanable

W 11am-12:50pm

Architecture is a body of fantastic lies. Speculative and projective, architectural production corrals, traffics in, and concocts imaginaries; its histories and theories are steeped in myth and regimes of mythmaking. This course provides space to interrogate the particular, ongoing, and mutating narratives, fictions, and myths perpetuated around the design, development, and material realization/construction of high-rise residential towers from the turn of the century to the start of what has been referred to as the Reagan era, alongside the various political, financial, and social agendas that motivated their development. The course aims to nurture modes of recognition of “housing” as critical loci where architectural form, federal and state power, municipal interactions of zone (zoning envelope, building volume, and air rights), finance, body, law, rhetoric, aesthetics, real estate development, and conceptions of racial difference come into view. The course reckons with typology and the seeming difficulty with imagining subjects racialized as black holding a position up in the sky.


ARCH 4213 (13287)

The City and Carbon Modernity

Elisa Iturbe

F 2pm-4:50pm

Humanity has moved through three energy paradigms, each of which has produced different built environments and social organizations. At each transition—from nomadic to agricultural and from agricultural to industrial—the productive capacity of human society was transformed, restructuring the existing social order and engendering a corresponding spatial and architectural paradigm. This course studies our current energy paradigm—carbon-intensive fossil fuels—as a driver of urban and architectural form. Rather than studying the technical aspects of energy, however, the course focuses on the social and spatial organizations that arise and are dependent on dense and abundant energy, identifying these as carbon form. Despite increasing awareness of environmental issues, architects continue to replicate carbon form, preventing a transition out of our current energy paradigm. Just as the modern movement proposed a new organization for the city based on the realities of industry, this moment demands new organizations that can respond to an urban system that the climate crisis has shown to be obsolete. Unlike in modernism, however, the energy transition to which we must respond has not yet occurred. And yet, architecture must still declare the death of carbon modernity and seek the means to overcome its material and cultural legacy. In this light, the course interrogates the foundations of contemporary human organization in order to lay new foundations for the oncoming transitions in energy and social form. Students study the theoretical roots of carbon form in the works of Le Corbusier, Hilberseimer, Koolhaas, and others, and speculate on new human settlement patterns by examining the relationship between the energy grid and the urban grid, i.e., between energy and urban form. Assignments include readings, reading responses, as well as drawings at the midterm and final. Limited enrollment.


ARCH 4252

Architecture/ Food: The Arch. of the Food System

Caitlyn Taylor

Th 9am-10:50am

This course explores the entangled production of food and our built environment as tangible, material manifestations of our societal and cultural values and as powerful and urgent drivers of rapidly accelerating climate change. The seminar surveys the spaces and places of the American food system throughout history and today, including its architecture and infrastructure, its inputs and outputs, its embodied energy, and its economic and political dynamics. Students read and analyze texts drawn from a number of disciplines including ecology, botany, economics, industrial engineering, and history, and synthesize material that is new to the architectural discourse. Course work results in a qualitative and quantitative survey of the architecture of our national food system and concludes with a focus on projective and future-facing concepts for radically repurposing food infrastructure. In doing so, students in the course set parameters for architecture as a means of regional food system transformation.


ENV 522 (13465)

Social Science Foundations for Environmental Managers

Amity Doolittle 

MW 1pm-2:20pm

The environmental social sciences shed light on how humans define, perceive, understand, manage, and otherwise influence the environment. Insights into the cultural, institutional, political-economic, and historic drivers of human actions are needed to describe and understand human-environment interactions as well as to move toward long-lasting and flexible responses to socio-environmental change. This basic knowledge course is designed to introduce students to a range of social science disciplines that are engaged in understanding the relationships between nature and society. Explicit focus is on how to mobilize the insights gained from environmental social sciences for natural resource management.


ENV 618 (14409)

Anthropology of Smallholder Agriculture in Developing Countries

Carol Carpenter

W 9am-11:50am

The premise of this course is that small-scale agriculture, its distinctive economic character, and its ecology shape each other in important ways. The course explores smallholder farming in the developing world through ethnographies.


ENV 826 (13462)

Foundations of Natural Resources Policy and Management

Susan Clark

T 2:30pm-5:20pm

This is a research seminar focused on the foundations of natural resources policy and management and designed for students in any subfield of environmental studies or other disciplines. The seminar’s purpose is to help students improve their skills in thinking more effectively and acting more responsibly in complex management and policy cases. The seminar explores comprehensive and integrated (interdisciplinary) concepts and methods for thinking about problems in natural resources policy and management and proposing solutions to them. Once students gain familiarity with the core concepts and methods of standpoint clarification and problem orientation, they apply them to particular issues in natural resources policy and management. Each student, alone and in collaboration with a group, is responsible for researching a particular problem. Each student circulates a draft of their paper to other seminar participants and lectures on and leads discussion of it in a class session. It is hoped that papers of sufficient quality will be published. Each student is also required to engage in course exercises outside of class and in in-class dialogue on a weekly basis. The seminar is designed to lay the foundation for all future work and for all other policy courses.


ENV 894 (13629)

Green Building: Issues and Perspectives

Peter Yost, Melissa Kops

F 9am-11:50am

Our built environment shapes the planet, our communities, and each of us. Green buildings seek to minimize environmental impacts, strengthen the fabric of our cities and towns, and make our work and our homes more productive and fulfilling. This course is an applied course, exploring both the technical and the social-business-political aspects of buildings. Topics range from building science (hygrothermal performance of building enclosures) to indoor environmental quality; from product certifications to resilience (robust buildings and communities in the face of disasters and extended service outages). The purpose of the course is to build a solid background in the processes and issues related to green buildings, equipping students with practical knowledge about the built environment. Extensive use is made of resources from BuildingGreen, Inc., one of the leading information companies supporting green building and green building professionals. The course takes a “joint-discovery” approach with substantial emphasis on research and group project work, some fieldwork, and online individual testing. There are too many topics within green building to cover in one term, so the course is broken down into two sections. The first six weeks focus on the following topics, led by the instructor and/or an expert guest lecturer: building science, materials, indoor environmental quality, rating programs and systems, resilience, systems integration. The second half of the course focuses on selected topics driven by students and their particular interest/academic focus. The class meets once a week, with the instructor available to students that same day. Enrollment limited to twenty-four.


ENV 980 (13615)

Social Justice in the Global Food System Capstone

Kristin Reynolds

Th 2:30pm-5:20pm

This course explores social justice dimensions of today’s globalized food system, considering justice in terms of sociopolitical and environmental dynamics. We connect theory and practice through work with community-based organizations working at the nexus of food, agriculture, and social justice. The capstone project work is grounded in food and social justice concepts examined through course materials and seminar discussions. We examine how governmental environmental strategies affect social equity in the food system at multiple scales. We discuss how land grabbing or food insecurity is connected to relative power on the global stage. We consider how phenomena such as structural violence and neoliberalization surface within the food system, and what this means for sustainability and justice—in urban and rural settings. We examine and debate concepts and practices including food sovereignty, agroecology, black agrarianism, and the right to food used to advance positive change. Through the capstone project, students have the opportunity to deepen learning and contribute to the work of community groups forging pathways for equity and justice in the food system, particularly among communities historically marginalized from mainstream economies and policy making. Project work includes meetings with organizational leaders to understand context and co-develop appropriate project approaches. Students work in groups to conduct in-depth research and analysis, and engage in additional professional and educational activities connected to the project. Student groups prepare a final presentation and report to be shared with the partner organizations. The course provides opportunities to develop competencies in analyzing global food system phenomena through social justice frameworks, and working within diverse settings on food and social justice issues, as practice for management, policy making, and other professional roles.


ENV 989 (13984) / EHS 598

Environment and Human Health

Michelle Bell 

M 1pm-3:50pm

This course provides an overview of the critical relationships between the environment and human health. The class explores the interaction between health and different parts of the environmental system including weather, air pollution, greenspace, environmental justice, and occupational health. Other topics include environmental ethics, exposure assessment, case studies of environmental health disasters, links between climate change and health, and integration of scientific evidence on environmental health. Students learn about current key topics in environmental health and how to critique and understand scientific studies on the environment and human health. The course incorporates lectures and discussion.


HIST 791 (10500)
Ports, Cities, and Empires
Paul Kennedy, Jay Gitlin
T 1:30pm-3:20pm
A study of the relationship between im

perialism and urbanism from the early modern period to the twentieth century. Topics include Roman medieval precedents; the uses and meanings of walls; merchant colonies and Latin Quarters; modernist urban planning and the International Style in Africa and the Middle East; comparative metro system in Paris, Algiers, and Montreal; decolonization and imperial nostalgia. Cities to be discussed include Delhi/New Delhi, New Orleans, Dublin, Cape Town, Tel Aviv, Addis Ababa, and many others.


HIST 930 (10485) /HSHM 701
Problems in the History of Medicine and Public Health
John Warner

T 1:30pm-3:20pm
An examination of the variety of approaches to the social and cultural history of medicine and public health. Readings are drawn from recent literature in the field, sampling writings on health care, illness experiences, and medical cultures in Asia, Latin America, Europe, and the United States from antiquity through the twenty-first century. Topics include the role of gender, class, ethnicity, race, religion, and region in the experience of sickness and healing; the intersection of lay and professional understandings of the body; and the role of the marketplace in shaping cultural authority, professional identities, and patient expectations.


HIST 931 (10484) /HSHM 702

Problems in the History of Science

Deborah Coen
Th 1:30pm-3:20pm
Surveys current methodologies through key theoretical and critical works. Students encounter major twentieth-century methodological moments that have left lasting imprints on the field: positivism and anti-positivism, the sociology of knowledge, actor-network theory, and historical epistemology, as well as newer approaches focusing on space, infrastructure, translation, and exchange. We also consider central conceptual problems for the field, such as the demarcation of science from pseudoscience; the definition of modernity and the narrative of the Scientific Revolution; vernacular science, the colonial archive, and non-textual sources.


HIST 937 (10482) /HSHM 761/AFAM 752
Medicine and Empire
Carolyn Roberts 
M 9:25am-11:15am
A reading course that explores medicine in the context of early modern empires with a focus on Africa, India, and the Americas. Topics include race, gender, and the body; medicine and the environment; itineraries of scientific knowledge; enslaved, indigenous, and creole medical and botanical knowledge and practice; colonial contests over medical authority and power; indigenous and enslaved epistemologies of the natural world; medicine and religion.


HSAR 705 (12569) 
Representing the American West

Jennifer Raab 

T 1:30pm-3:20pm

The American West holds a powerful place in the cultural and political imagination of the United States. Taught at the Beinecke, this course examines settler colonial art and visual culture from the early republic to the present, considering changing conceptions of the land across media—from maps, aquatints, and guidebooks to paintings, panoramas, and photographs. We consider the representation of railroads, National Parks, ghost towns, and highways; terms such as distance, aridity, seriality, mythology, and the frontier; artists’ engagement with ecological questions; the construction of whiteness in and through the landscape; and sites of indigenous resistance. The seminar foregrounds research and writing, with the term structured around the conceptualization and development of student papers emerging from the Beinecke’s extraordinary collection of Western Americana. Prior permission of the instructor is required.


LAW (20054)
Animal Law
Jonathan Lovvorn, Doug Kysar
M 4:10pm-6pm
This course will examine the application of the law to non-human animals, the rules and regulations that govern their treatment, and the concepts of “animal welfare” and “animal rights.” The course will explore the historical and philosophical treatment of animals, discuss how such treatment impacts the way judges, politicians, lawyers, legal scholars and lay people see, speak about, and use animals; survey current animal protection laws and regulations, including overlap with such policy issues as food and agriculture, climate change, and biodiversity protection; describe recent political and legal campaigns to reform animal protection laws; examine the concept of “standing” and the problems of litigating on behalf of animals; discuss the current classification of animals as “property” and the impacts of that classification, and debate the merits and limitations of alternative classifications, such as the recognition of “legal rights” for animals. Students will write a series of short response papers. An option to produce a longer research paper for Substantial or Supervised Analytic Writing credit will be available to Law students.  Enrollment limited to forty.


REL 951 (14678)

Environmental Ethics and Theology

Luke Kreider

F 9:30am-11:20am

This course explores theological responses to environmental problems and critically examines the relations between ecology and Christian ethics. Why does the environment matter from a Christian perspective? How does creation make claims on Christian life? By what moral, theological, and/or biblical resources do Christians interpret environmental problems? How do environmental issues intersect with social issues, including dynamics of race, class, and gender? How do Christians discern intersectional responsibilities for their ecological and sociopolitical relations? Should ecology influence theology? Should nature source spirituality? How does place matter for Christian identity and theology? The seminar investigates these questions by examining a wide range of Christian perspectives on environmental ethics. Area V and Area II.