Climate Course Descriptions
Climate and Environmental Science Courses
Climate Contexts Course Requirement
Our current climate crisis is, at its heart, a social, political, and economic crisis with deep historical roots. Climate context courses in the Humanities, Social Sciences and the Arts will explore multiple intersecting causes of climate change, and consider the uneven impacts of climate instability across global and local communities, environments, and more than human relations. These courses will give students in the joint major the opportunity to critically evaluate potential strategies for adaptation and mitigation, and the space to engage in storytelling and artistic production to imagine more just futures.
What does it mean to have this competency?
Students who have completed their Climate Contexts requirement will have taken at least one course in the Humanities, Social Sciences, and the Arts which speaks to the topic of climate change or which contributes significantly to a student’s understanding of environmental change on a global scale.
Why is it critical?
All HMC students are required to complete 10 courses beyond the Core in HSA fields, bringing notable breadth to their education atypical of earth science and environmental engineering programs nationally. This requirement ensures that at least one of those 10 courses will speak directly to climate change, helping students build greater context for the problem and the many available paths forward.
Which courses count?
The following HMC courses have been approved as Climate Contexts courses:
- ECON146 Environmental Economics
- ECON179G Economics of Natural Resources
- GEOG179I Feeling Natural?: Affect and Psychoanalysis in Contemporary Environmental Cultural Studies
- POST140 Global Environmental Politics
- POST114 Comparative Environmental Politics
- POST168 Bicycle Revolution
- PSYC179O The MANthropocene
- RLST179G Religious Views: Ecology and Climate Change
- SOSC188 Tropical Forests: Policy and Practice
- SOC179D Sociology of Waste