- Introduction
- About Amherst College
- Admission & Financial Aid
- Regulations & Requirements
- Amherst College Courses
- Five College Programs & Certificates
- Honors & Fellowships
Introduction
Introduction
BackEnvironmental Studies
Professors Clotfelter‡, López, Martini, Melillo (Chair), Miller†, Moore, Sims and Temeles; Associate Professor Holleman; Assistant Professors Hewitt, Ravikumar and Zhang; Senior Lecturer Levin†.
For many thousands of years, our ancestors were more shaped by the environment, than they were shapers of it. This began to change, first with hunting and then, roughly ten thousand years ago, with the beginnings of agriculture. Since then, humans have had a steadily increasing impact on the natural world. Environmental Studies explores the complex interactions between humans and their environment. This exploration requires grounding in the natural sciences, the humanities, and the social sciences.
Majors in Environmental Studies take a minimum of eleven courses that collectively reflect the subject’s interdisciplinary nature. The required introductory courses (ENST-110 and ENST-120) and senior seminar (ENST-495) are taught by faculty from the natural sciences, the social sciences, and humanities. The core courses include Ecology (ENST-210), Environmental History (ENST-105, ENST-220 or ENST-265), Economics (ENST-230 or ECON-111), Statistics/Research Methods (many course options), Environmental Policy (ENST-250 or ENST-260), and Environmental Justice (ENST-265 or ENST-330). Beyond these courses, majors must take two electives, including at least one course from each of two categories (Category I: Natural sciences and Category II: Social sciences and Humanities), which span different fields of environmental inquiry.
Majors are strongly encouraged to complete the introductory course by the end of their second year and the core requirements prior to their senior year. The senior seminar (ENST-495) offered in the fall semester, fulfills the comprehensive requirement.
The honors program in Environmental Studies involves two course credits. Majors electing to complete honors are required to submit a thesis proposal to the Department either in the spring of the junior year (if summer work is required) or at the beginning of the first semester of the senior year. Accepted candidates can take either an honors course in two successive semesters (ENST-498 & ENST-499) or take a double-credit course in the spring semester (ENST-499D).
Students who wish to satisfy a requirement with a Five College course or a course taken away from Amherst College must petition the Department in writing through the Chair and submit a syllabus or description of the course for approval. Students for whom Environmental Studies is a second major can count no more than two courses toward both majors.
* On leave 2022-23†On leave fall semester 2022-23‡On leave spring semester 2022-23
104, 220 Environmental Issues of the 19th Century
(Offered as HIST 104 [TR/c] and ENST 220) This course considers the ways that people in various parts of the world thought about and acted upon nature during the nineteenth century. We look historically at issues that continue to have relevance today, including: invasive species, deforestation, soil-nitrogen availability, water use, desertification, and air pollution. Themes include: the relationship of nineteenth-century colonialism and environmental degradation, gender and environmental change, the racial dimensions of ecological issues, and the spatial aspects of human interactions with nature. We will take at least one field trip. In addition, we will watch three films that approach nineteenth-century environmental issues from different vantage points. Two class meetings per week.
Limited to 18 students. Spring semester. Professor Melillo.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Spring 2012, Spring 2014, Spring 2015, Fall 2018, Spring 2020, Spring 2021
110 Environmental Science with laboratory
This course provides an introduction to environmental science. Students will gain an understanding of the function and interactions between the biological, chemical, and physical components of the biosphere and take a systems approach to addressing environmental issues. Lectures on the Earth’s physical and ecological systems, resource use and management, and pollution and toxicology will link central scientific concepts to case studies of regional, national, and global environmental concern. The laboratory will expose students to various tools, techniques, and methodologies used to study the natural environment and document problems. Through field studies and the analysis of data and scientific literature, we will explore air, water, soil, and vegetation processes and their connection to local and global environmental issues. Students will identify research questions, test hypotheses, develop sampling and analysis plans, execute various field and lab methods, and report scientific findings.
Limited to 16 students. Fall 2022. Professor Hewitt.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Fall 2022, Fall 2023
111E, 230 An Introduction to Economics with Environmental Applications
(Offered as ECON 111E and ENST 230) An introduction to the core theories and measures of markets and the current economic system. We study both microeconomics, which addresses the central problem of resource scarcity and how markets for individual goods and services function, and macroeconomics, which addresses the economy as a whole and key aggregate measures such as unemployment and inflation. Econ 111E covers the same material as ECON 111 but with special attention to the relationship between economic activity and environmental problems, including market failures, and to the application of economic tools to analyze environmental issues. A student may not receive credit for both ECON 111 and ECON 111E. Two 80-minute and one 50-minute lecture/discussions per week.
Admission with consent of the instructor. Limited to 25 Amherst College students. Spring semester. Professor Sims.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Fall 2012, Fall 2013, Fall 2014, Fall 2015, Fall 2016, Fall 2018, Spring 2020, Fall 2021, Spring 2022, Fall 2023
120 The Resilient (?) Earth: An Introduction to Environmental Studies
What is ‘the environment’ and why does it matter? What are the environmental impacts of “business as usual”? What kinds of environmental futures do we want to work towards and what are the alternatives? In this course, we will explore these and other questions that examine how and why we relate to the environment in the ways that we do and the social, ecological and ethical implications of these relationships. As an Introduction to Environmental Studies, this course seeks to (i) develop a common framework for understanding ‘the environment’ as a tightly coupled socio-natural enterprise, and (ii) familiarize students with several key environmental issues of the 21st century. One lecture and one discussion section per week.
Limited to 50 students. Spring semester. Senior Lecturer R. Levin and Professor Holleman.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Spring 2012, Spring 2013, Spring 2014, Spring 2015, Spring 2016, Spring 2017, Spring 2018, Spring 2019, Spring 2020, Spring 2021, Spring 2022, Spring 2024
207 The Wild and the Cultivated
(Offered as HIST 207 [TR/C] and ENST 207) For thousands of years, wild and domesticated plants have played crucial roles in the development of cultures and societies. Students in this course will consider human relationships with plants from a global-historical perspective, comparing trends in various regions and time periods. We will focus on the Neolithic Agricultural Revolution, seed-saving practices, medicinal plants, religious rites, food traditions, biopiracy, agribusiness, and biofuels. Two class meetings per week.
Limited to 30 students. Fall semester. Professor Melillo.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Spring 2019, Fall 2022
210, 230 Ecology
(Offered as BIOL 230 and ENST 210) A study of the relationships of plants and animals (including humans) to each other and to their environment. We'll start by considering the decisions an individual makes in its daily life concerning its use of resources, such as what to eat and where to live, and whether to defend such resources. We'll then move on to populations of individuals, and investigate species population growth, limits to population growth, and why some species are so successful as to become pests whereas others are on the road to extinction. The next level will address communities, and how interactions among populations, such as competition, predation, parasitism, and mutualism, affect the organization and diversity of species within communities. The final stage of the course will focus on ecosystems, and the effects of humans and other organisms on population, community, and global stability. Three hours of lecture per week.
Requisite: BIOL 181 or ENST 110 or equivalent. Limited to 40 students. Spring Semester. Professor Temeles.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Spring 2012, Fall 2012, Fall 2013, Fall 2014, Fall 2015, Fall 2016, Fall 2017, Fall 2018, Spring 2019, Spring 2020, Fall 2020, Fall 2021, Spring 2024
225 Climate Change: Science and Society
Understanding the connections between climate science and the societal impacts of climate change is key to addressing the global climate crisis. This course will critically examine climate change drivers, impacts, and solutions from the scientific and societal perspectives. Through lecture, discussion, and project work we will examine environmental responses to climate change, communication within the scientific community and by stakeholders, and adaptation and mitigation response strategies. Our examination of the science will be grounded by careful analysis of documents such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and will empower students to translate their understanding of the science into meaningful communication strategies designed to mitigate the effects of climate change. This course will emphasize verbal, written, and visual communication skills pertaining to climate change science.
Requisites: ENST-120, BIOL-181, GEOL-109, or consent of instructor. Limited to 18 students. Omit Spring 2023. Assistant Professor Hewitt.
2022-23: Not offeredOther years: Offered in Spring 2024
226 Unequal Footprints on the Earth: Understanding the Social Drivers of Ecological Crises and Environmental Inequality
(Offered as SOCI 226 and ENST 226) Creating a more sustainable relationship between human society and the rest of nature requires changing the way we relate to one another as humans. This course will explain why, while answering a number of associated questions and introducing the exciting and engaged field of environmental sociology. We study the anthropogenic drivers of environmental change from an interdisciplinary and historical perspective to make sense of pressing socio-ecological issues, including climate change, sustainability and justice in global food production, the disproportionate location of toxic waste disposal in communities of color, biodiversity loss, desertification, freshwater pollution and unequal access, the accumulation and trade in electronic waste, the ecological footprint of the Internet, and more. We examine how these issues are linked to broad inequalities within society, which are reflected in, and exacerbated by, persistent problems with environmental racism, the unaddressed legacies of colonialism, and other contributors to environmental injustice worldwide. Industrialization and the expansionary tendencies of the modern economic system receive particular attention, as these continue to be central factors promoting ecological change. Throughout the course a hopeful perspective in the face of such interrelated challenges is encouraged as we study promising efforts and movements that emphasize both ecological restoration and achievement of a more just, democratic world.
Course readings include foundational texts in environmental sociology, as well as the most current research on course topics. Writing and research assignments allow for the development of in-depth analyses of social and environmental issues relevant to students' community, everyday life, personal experience, and concerns.
Limited to 18 students. Fall semester. Professor Holleman.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Fall 2012, Fall 2013, Spring 2015, Fall 2016, Fall 2017, Fall 2018, Fall 2020, Fall 2021, Fall 2022
250 US Environmental Policy
This course is built around core readings on key policies and agencies of environmental governance in the US. It will provide students with a strong grasp of the most important environmental legislation in the United States (such as the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Clean Air Act). We will explore how existing environmental laws and institutions have provided important environmental protections, and also where they have fallen short. We will also ask how environmental racism and other forms of inequality have been addressed or exacerbated by historical policies, with an eye towards identifying promising alternatives in the future. Students will examine the relationships between local, state, and federal agencies carrying out environmental governance. This class will explore how policy is "political," and how it emerges from the actions of competing interest groups.
Pre-requisite: ENST-120. Fall 2022. Professor Ravikumar.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Fall 2022, Fall 2023
260 Global Environmental Politics
The effects of environmental problems, from climate change, to water contamination, to the depletion of fisheries, are felt acutely at the local level. But their underlying causes are often global: coal-burning power plants in China affects sea-level rise near Miami, overfishing by European fleets off the coast of Africa affects bush meat hunting in the Congo Basin, and deforestation in Indonesia creates forest fires that affect all of Southeast Asia’s air quality. Environmental issues are also fundamentally political: that is, they emerge through negotiations between different actors and groups with divergent interests and disparate degrees of power and influence. In this course, we will examine how environmental problems emerge through political processes that transcend national borders. Through foundational readings, in-depth classroom discussions, and team-based analysis of pressing contemporary cases, you will learn the tools of rigorous multi-level political and policy analysis. While we will emphasize that a global and explicitly political analysis is necessary to properly diagnose why environmental problems and conflicts emerge, we will focus on how these diagnoses suggest solutions. Coming out of this course, you will be better equipped to analyze how global politics are linked to local environmental issues, and to understand when different types of solutions – from small changes to policy, to international treaties, to protest and demands for radical systems change – are most likely to move the needle on environmental sustainability and justice.
Requisite: ENST 120. Limited to 35 students. Spring 2023. Professor Ravikumar.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Spring 2024
270 Food and the Environment: Towards Global Health, Justice, and Sustainable Development
(Offered as ENST-270 and SOCI-270) Food and farming make fundamental connections between humans and the earth. This course examines how agriculture, food systems, and rural development are entangled with environmental and social transformations around the world, and how we can cultivate solutions for global health, sustainability and social justice. Topics examined range from technological modernization and biotechnology to agroecology and food culture, malnutrition and obesity, food safety and environmental intoxication, land and labor struggles, race and gender issues in food systems, and from climate change to sustainable development. Readings draw from development studies and sociology, critical food and agrarian studies, political ecology and other interdisciplinary environmental studies. In addition to the lectures, students will cultivate critical thinking and improve skills in reading, writing, discussion, and creativity through dialogue, hands-on activities at the Book & Plow farm, creative exercises, and independent research.
Spring semester. Associate Professor Zhang.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Spring 2022, Fall 2023, Spring 2024
300 The Green New Deal
The Green New Deal has gained traction in the United States and around the world as a new approach to environmental policy and to redress structural inequalities linked to income and race. What is the Green New Deal, and how does it seem to transform environmental governance? In this course, we will explore key readings on the Green New Deal, and explore its connection to the original New Deal. We will examine how it relates to relevant literatures, such as environmental economics, political economy, critical race theory, and environmental sociology. We will critically debate the merits of various proposals for the Green New Deal using these frameworks and explore what it might take to translate these proposals into effective legislation. This class will equip students to contribute to a national conversation around these questions. Students will write weekly reflections, a policy brief or op-ed, and a research paper.
Pre-requisite: Background knowledge on climate change, environmental policy, or economics is recommended (e.g., courses such as ENST 226, 230, 252, 260, 330, 342 or POSC 112, 231, 307). Instructor permission required for students who have not taken ENST 120. Limited to 20 students. Fall 2022. Professor Ravikumar.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Fall 2022
301 Hydrogeology
(Offered as GEOL 301 and ENST 301) As the global human population expands in a future marked by climate change, the search for and preservation of our most vital resource, water, will demand thoughtful policy and greater scientific understanding. This course is an introduction to surface and groundwater hydrology, geochemistry, and management for natural systems and human needs. Lectures will focus on understanding the hydrologic cycle, how water flows over and within the earth, and the many ways in which this water is threatened by contamination and overuse. Three hours of lecture and three hours of lab each week. The laboratory will be centered around on-going local issues concerning use and restoration of the Fort River watershed.
Requisite: GEOL 109 or 111 or consent of the instructor. Fall semester. Professor Martini.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Spring 2012, Spring 2013, Spring 2015, Fall 2016, Fall 2018, Spring 2021, Spring 2022, Fall 2022
306 Pandemics and Society: The Socio-Ecological Construction of Infectious Diseases throughout History
(Offered as SOCI-306 and ENST-306) How and why do pandemics emerge? How have pandemics been shaped by social and ecological conditions around the world? And how do pandemics in turn transform society and our environment? This is a research-oriented interdisciplinary seminar examining how epidemic infectious diseases are not naturally given but socially and environmentally constructed. We will study the plague (including the Black Death), smallpox, dengue, malaria, cholera, tuberculosis, influenza, HIV, SARS, MERS, and COVID-19, and draw upon examples from all around the world throughout history. Special attention is given to environmental change and modernization, science and technology, state-making and globalization, migration and geopolitics, as well as class, race/ethnicity and gender inequalities. The seminar will draw on readings in sociology, anthropology, history, geography, public health, biology, epidemiology, political ecology, and other interdisciplinary fields. Lectures will be accompanied by discussion, and students will be required to undertake independent research, write a final essay, and present their work to the class. We will explore the possibility of publishing final essays as a collection.
Limited to 20 students. Spring semester. Professor Zhang.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Spring 2024
310 Ecosystem Ecology
This course examines the principles of ecosystem ecology, which facilitates our understanding of key environmental issues. We will focus on water and elemental cycling and energy flow in terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. Topics will include the Earth’s climate system, carbon cycling, nutrient cycling, disturbance regimes, succession, and ecosystem resilience. We will discuss how ecosystem structure and function relates to applied issues of conservation, sustainability, and responses to climate change.
Requisites: ENST-210 or consent of instructor. Spring 2023. Professor Hewitt.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023
314 Climate Justice Now
(Offered as ENST-314 and SOCI-314) A 2020 survey of nearly 21,000 adults in 28 countries conducted by the World Economic Forum and Ipsos found that 86% of people want to see a more equitable and sustainable world after the pandemic. Action on climate change is central to these goals. But what kind of action do we take? What are the targets of effective climate action? How can each of us contribute to the larger-scale changes needed to address global warming and work toward climate justice now? The goal of this course is to answer these questions by taking as our point of departure the 2022 report of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which provides the most comprehensive overview available of the international social science of climate change mitigation. This report shows real possibilities for keeping global temperatures below the more dangerous thresholds expected with “business as usual” if we take more urgent action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) across sectors. The report highlights that “collective action and social organising are crucial to shift the possibility space of public policy on climate change mitigation” and that explicit consideration of the principles of justice, equality, and fairness enables the acceleration of the transition to sustainability. Therefore, we focus on the evidence regarding how our actions to address climate change can improve lives and contribute to the just and fair society most of us want by transforming critical sectors, including, for example, transportation, electricity, and land use. This course involves experiential learning.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Fall 2023, Spring 2024
328 The Pandemic
(Offered as SOCI 328 and ENST 328) This course examines the root social and ecological conditions that gave rise to the COVID-19 pandemic and that help explain the significant inequalities we observe in terms of its impact. We study the structure and historical development of the global economy and the state, class and racial formation, the gendered division of society, and global ecological challenges, all of which provide necessary background to understand the pandemic’s emergence, effects, and the range of social response, including state policy. These studies include attention to the persistent consequences of colonialism, settler colonialism, and racial capitalism. We also study the contested nature of these developments, such as how movements and struggles over political power, economic development, racial justice, ecological protection, and public health, shape outcomes.
This course will be conducted in a hybrid format, with more of the course online and in-person meetings included as possible. Options for online-only participation will be available for those students unable to participate in person.
Limited to 15 students. Omitted 2021-22. Professors Holleman and Lembo.
2022-23: Not offeredOther years: Offered in Spring 2021
341 Ecology, Justice, and the Struggle for Socio-Ecological Change: Environmental Movements and Ideas
(Offered as SOCI 341 and ENST 341) Social movements—from the early conservation and anti-colonial movements that began over a century ago, to the modern climate justice movement—have worked to make environmental issues and inequalities part of the global political and policy agenda. The course draws upon sociological research that fosters an understanding of contemporary environmental debates, as well as the possibilities and obstacles we face in attempting to address socio-ecological problems. We study diverse global environmental movements and proposed environmental solutions, which reflect a wide range of perspectives and interests, as well as social inequalities. Inequality within and between countries means that different issues are at stake in negotiations addressing ecological problems for communities and people of different social locations. Race, ethnicity, class, gender, and position in the global economy affect both the way we experience socio-ecological change, and the ways we imagine and attempt to solve contemporary problems. Therefore, issues of environmental justice are highlighted as we study the history and achievements of environmental movements internationally, as well as enduring challenges and controversies. The syllabus is designed to benefit both the most seasoned environmentalists and students of the history of environmentalism, as well as participants for whom the course topics are new.
Limited to 20 students. Omitted 2021-22. Professor Holleman.
2022-23: Not offeredOther years: Offered in Spring 2013, Spring 2014, Fall 2014, Spring 2017, Spring 2018
342 Socio-Ecological Victories and Visions
(Offered as SOCI 342 and ENST 342) If you learn about the major trends shaping human societies and the rest of the planet in our era, you might ask these questions: How do we reduce the vast inequalities threatening democracy and undermining the self-determination of peoples around the world? How do we address global-scale crises like climate change, the pollution of the earth’s lands and waters, and anthropogenic extinction of species? How do we heal social divisions to build movements based on solidarity and reparation that transcend a “single-issue” focus while emphasizing the distinct needs of diverse communities? Can we imagine a society geared toward meeting culturally-determined human needs and deepening human happiness, while at the same time restoring the earth systems on which we depend? How do we engage such daunting issues with strength and, at times, joy?
These are massive questions now asked by scholars, scientists, activists, and communities around the world. This course explores answers to these questions through in-depth sociological analyses of critical victories and visions toward ecological and social change emerging internationally in the past decade. Such case studies represent hopeful challenges to the xenophobic, racist, anti-ecological, homophobic, misogynistic, winner-takes-all politics threatening much of life on earth.
Students must have at least one course in either SOCI or ANTH, or ENST 120, or other courses addressing the trends that are central to this course.
Limited to 18 students. Admission with consent of the instructor. Omitted 2021-22. Professor Holleman.
2022-23: Not offeredOther years: Offered in Spring 2019
374, 474 Population Ethics
(Offered as ENST 474 and PHIL 374) Is our planet overpopulated? And if so, how many of us should live on it? Population raises tricky questions that are both empirical and broadly philosophical: How should we weigh the well-being of future individuals against the lives of those currently living? Should we aim for a future population whose average or whose total level of well-being is maximized—or should we apply some other standard? Even more fundamentally: are we right to think of human life as, on balance, a positive thing? And how might a policy based on answers to such questions be weighed against rights to reproductive choice, and against considerations of justice? In this seminar, we will explore recent work in the emerging and fascinating field of population ethics. We will chart new areas for research, as well as for practical policy-making.
Requisite: At least one course in either ENST or PHIL. Limited to 15 students. Spring semester. Professor Moore.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023402 Wine, History and the Environment
(Offered as HIST 402 [TC/TE/C] and ENST 402.) Wine is as old as civilization, and is deeply wedded to religious and secular traditions around the world. Its production has transformed landscapes, ecosystems, and economies. In this course we examine how wine has shaped the history of Europe, North Africa, the Americas, and, increasingly, China. Through historical readings, scientific study, art, and class discussion, students will learn about such issues as the environmental impact of wine; the politics of taste and class; the organization of labor; the impact of imperialism and global trade; the late nineteenth-century phylloxera outbreak that almost destroyed the European wine industry; and the emergence of claims about terroir (the notion that each wine, like each culture, is uniquely tied to a place) and how such claims are anchored to regional and national identity. We will get our hands dirty with soil sampling, learn the basics of sediment analysis in the laboratory, and have a go at fermentation. Required field trips might include the taking of soil samples and planting of vines at Book and Plow Farm and a visit to a nearby winery. There also might be an optional multi-day oenology trip to New York’s Finger Lake district. Students who are using the course as their research seminar for History or LLAS will have one extra workshop each week to focus on the design and execution of an independent research project.
Limited to 20 students. This is a research seminar open to juniors and seniors. Spring semester. Professor López and Professor Martini.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Fall 2011, Fall 2012, Spring 2013, Spring 2014
430 Seminar on Fisheries
The dependency of many countries on marine organisms for food has resulted in severe population declines in cod, bluefin tuna, swordfish, and abalone, as well as numerous other marine organisms. In this seminar we will examine the sociological, political, and economic impacts of global depletion of fisheries. Questions addressed will be: What is the scope of extinctions or potential extinctions due to over-harvesting of marine organisms? How are fisheries managed, and are some approaches to harvesting better than others? How do fisheries extinctions affect the society and economy of various countries, and ecosystem stability? How do cultural traditions of fishermen influence attempts to manage fisheries? Does aquaculture offer a sustainable alternative to overfishing the seas, and what is aquaculture’s impact on ecosystem stability? Three class hours per week.
Requisite: ENST 120 or BIOL 230/ENST 210. Limited to 15 students. Spring semester. Professor Temeles.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Spring 2013, Spring 2021, Spring 2024
440, 441 Seminar in Conservation Biology
(Offered as BIOL 440 and ENST 441) Conservation biology is a highly interdisciplinary field, requiring careful consideration of biological, economic, and sociological issues. Solutions to biodiversity conservation and environmental challenges are even more complex. Yet, conservation is a topic of timely importance in order to safeguard biological diversity. Utilizing close reading and discussion of articles from the primary literature, the course will explore key topics including overexploitation (including connections between the wildlife trade and emergent diseases such as COVID-19), habitat fragmentation, climate change, restoration, protected areas, payments for ecosystem services, as well as how to determine appropriate conservation priorities. Three classroom hours per week.
Requisite: BIOL 230/ENST 210 or BIOL 320, or consent of the instructor. Not open to first-year students. Limited to 14 students. Spring Semester. Senior Lecturer Levin.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Spring 2012, Fall 2013, Fall 2015, Fall 2016, Spring 2018, Fall 2019, Fall 2020, Spring 2022
490 Special Topics
Independent reading course.
Fall and spring semesters. The Department.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022, Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Fall 2011, Spring 2012, Fall 2012, Spring 2013, Fall 2013, Spring 2014, Fall 2014, Spring 2015, Fall 2015, Spring 2016, Fall 2016, Spring 2017, Fall 2017, Spring 2018, Fall 2018, Spring 2019, Fall 2019, Spring 2020, Fall 2020, Spring 2021, Fall 2021, Spring 2022, Fall 2022
495 Senior Seminar
The Senior Seminar is the capstone course in the environmental studies major, which serves as the comprehensive requirement, and is taken by all seniors in the fall of their senior year. The diversity of student interests is one of the strengths of the environmental studies department at Amherst and the senior seminar captures this diversity by asking students to explore their own interests through substantial, original research on an environmental topic. The capstone is designed to be flexible to accommodate diverse interests and cultivate different skills, including finding and making sense of material from a variety of sources, articulating effective arguments, and gaining fluency in the communication of ideas.
Open to seniors. Fall semester. Professor Sims.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Fall 2022, Fall 2023
498, 499D Senior Honors
Fall semester. The Department.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Fall 2011, Fall 2012, Fall 2013, Fall 2014, Fall 2015, Fall 2016, Fall 2017, Fall 2018, Fall 2019, Fall 2020, January 2021, Fall 2021, January 2022, Spring 2022, Fall 2022, Fall 2023
499 Senior Departmental Honors
Spring semester. The Department.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Spring 2012, Spring 2013, Spring 2014, Spring 2015, Spring 2016, Spring 2017, Spring 2018, Spring 2019, Spring 2020, Spring 2021, Spring 2022, Spring 2024
Related Courses
About Amherst College
About Amherst College
BackEnvironmental Studies
Professors Clotfelter‡, López, Martini, Melillo (Chair), Miller†, Moore, Sims and Temeles; Associate Professor Holleman; Assistant Professors Hewitt, Ravikumar and Zhang; Senior Lecturer Levin†.
For many thousands of years, our ancestors were more shaped by the environment, than they were shapers of it. This began to change, first with hunting and then, roughly ten thousand years ago, with the beginnings of agriculture. Since then, humans have had a steadily increasing impact on the natural world. Environmental Studies explores the complex interactions between humans and their environment. This exploration requires grounding in the natural sciences, the humanities, and the social sciences.
Majors in Environmental Studies take a minimum of eleven courses that collectively reflect the subject’s interdisciplinary nature. The required introductory courses (ENST-110 and ENST-120) and senior seminar (ENST-495) are taught by faculty from the natural sciences, the social sciences, and humanities. The core courses include Ecology (ENST-210), Environmental History (ENST-105, ENST-220 or ENST-265), Economics (ENST-230 or ECON-111), Statistics/Research Methods (many course options), Environmental Policy (ENST-250 or ENST-260), and Environmental Justice (ENST-265 or ENST-330). Beyond these courses, majors must take two electives, including at least one course from each of two categories (Category I: Natural sciences and Category II: Social sciences and Humanities), which span different fields of environmental inquiry.
Majors are strongly encouraged to complete the introductory course by the end of their second year and the core requirements prior to their senior year. The senior seminar (ENST-495) offered in the fall semester, fulfills the comprehensive requirement.
The honors program in Environmental Studies involves two course credits. Majors electing to complete honors are required to submit a thesis proposal to the Department either in the spring of the junior year (if summer work is required) or at the beginning of the first semester of the senior year. Accepted candidates can take either an honors course in two successive semesters (ENST-498 & ENST-499) or take a double-credit course in the spring semester (ENST-499D).
Students who wish to satisfy a requirement with a Five College course or a course taken away from Amherst College must petition the Department in writing through the Chair and submit a syllabus or description of the course for approval. Students for whom Environmental Studies is a second major can count no more than two courses toward both majors.
* On leave 2022-23†On leave fall semester 2022-23‡On leave spring semester 2022-23
104, 220 Environmental Issues of the 19th Century
(Offered as HIST 104 [TR/c] and ENST 220) This course considers the ways that people in various parts of the world thought about and acted upon nature during the nineteenth century. We look historically at issues that continue to have relevance today, including: invasive species, deforestation, soil-nitrogen availability, water use, desertification, and air pollution. Themes include: the relationship of nineteenth-century colonialism and environmental degradation, gender and environmental change, the racial dimensions of ecological issues, and the spatial aspects of human interactions with nature. We will take at least one field trip. In addition, we will watch three films that approach nineteenth-century environmental issues from different vantage points. Two class meetings per week.
Limited to 18 students. Spring semester. Professor Melillo.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Spring 2012, Spring 2014, Spring 2015, Fall 2018, Spring 2020, Spring 2021
110 Environmental Science with laboratory
This course provides an introduction to environmental science. Students will gain an understanding of the function and interactions between the biological, chemical, and physical components of the biosphere and take a systems approach to addressing environmental issues. Lectures on the Earth’s physical and ecological systems, resource use and management, and pollution and toxicology will link central scientific concepts to case studies of regional, national, and global environmental concern. The laboratory will expose students to various tools, techniques, and methodologies used to study the natural environment and document problems. Through field studies and the analysis of data and scientific literature, we will explore air, water, soil, and vegetation processes and their connection to local and global environmental issues. Students will identify research questions, test hypotheses, develop sampling and analysis plans, execute various field and lab methods, and report scientific findings.
Limited to 16 students. Fall 2022. Professor Hewitt.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Fall 2022, Fall 2023
111E, 230 An Introduction to Economics with Environmental Applications
(Offered as ECON 111E and ENST 230) An introduction to the core theories and measures of markets and the current economic system. We study both microeconomics, which addresses the central problem of resource scarcity and how markets for individual goods and services function, and macroeconomics, which addresses the economy as a whole and key aggregate measures such as unemployment and inflation. Econ 111E covers the same material as ECON 111 but with special attention to the relationship between economic activity and environmental problems, including market failures, and to the application of economic tools to analyze environmental issues. A student may not receive credit for both ECON 111 and ECON 111E. Two 80-minute and one 50-minute lecture/discussions per week.
Admission with consent of the instructor. Limited to 25 Amherst College students. Spring semester. Professor Sims.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Fall 2012, Fall 2013, Fall 2014, Fall 2015, Fall 2016, Fall 2018, Spring 2020, Fall 2021, Spring 2022, Fall 2023
120 The Resilient (?) Earth: An Introduction to Environmental Studies
What is ‘the environment’ and why does it matter? What are the environmental impacts of “business as usual”? What kinds of environmental futures do we want to work towards and what are the alternatives? In this course, we will explore these and other questions that examine how and why we relate to the environment in the ways that we do and the social, ecological and ethical implications of these relationships. As an Introduction to Environmental Studies, this course seeks to (i) develop a common framework for understanding ‘the environment’ as a tightly coupled socio-natural enterprise, and (ii) familiarize students with several key environmental issues of the 21st century. One lecture and one discussion section per week.
Limited to 50 students. Spring semester. Senior Lecturer R. Levin and Professor Holleman.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Spring 2012, Spring 2013, Spring 2014, Spring 2015, Spring 2016, Spring 2017, Spring 2018, Spring 2019, Spring 2020, Spring 2021, Spring 2022, Spring 2024
207 The Wild and the Cultivated
(Offered as HIST 207 [TR/C] and ENST 207) For thousands of years, wild and domesticated plants have played crucial roles in the development of cultures and societies. Students in this course will consider human relationships with plants from a global-historical perspective, comparing trends in various regions and time periods. We will focus on the Neolithic Agricultural Revolution, seed-saving practices, medicinal plants, religious rites, food traditions, biopiracy, agribusiness, and biofuels. Two class meetings per week.
Limited to 30 students. Fall semester. Professor Melillo.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Spring 2019, Fall 2022
210, 230 Ecology
(Offered as BIOL 230 and ENST 210) A study of the relationships of plants and animals (including humans) to each other and to their environment. We'll start by considering the decisions an individual makes in its daily life concerning its use of resources, such as what to eat and where to live, and whether to defend such resources. We'll then move on to populations of individuals, and investigate species population growth, limits to population growth, and why some species are so successful as to become pests whereas others are on the road to extinction. The next level will address communities, and how interactions among populations, such as competition, predation, parasitism, and mutualism, affect the organization and diversity of species within communities. The final stage of the course will focus on ecosystems, and the effects of humans and other organisms on population, community, and global stability. Three hours of lecture per week.
Requisite: BIOL 181 or ENST 110 or equivalent. Limited to 40 students. Spring Semester. Professor Temeles.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Spring 2012, Fall 2012, Fall 2013, Fall 2014, Fall 2015, Fall 2016, Fall 2017, Fall 2018, Spring 2019, Spring 2020, Fall 2020, Fall 2021, Spring 2024
225 Climate Change: Science and Society
Understanding the connections between climate science and the societal impacts of climate change is key to addressing the global climate crisis. This course will critically examine climate change drivers, impacts, and solutions from the scientific and societal perspectives. Through lecture, discussion, and project work we will examine environmental responses to climate change, communication within the scientific community and by stakeholders, and adaptation and mitigation response strategies. Our examination of the science will be grounded by careful analysis of documents such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and will empower students to translate their understanding of the science into meaningful communication strategies designed to mitigate the effects of climate change. This course will emphasize verbal, written, and visual communication skills pertaining to climate change science.
Requisites: ENST-120, BIOL-181, GEOL-109, or consent of instructor. Limited to 18 students. Omit Spring 2023. Assistant Professor Hewitt.
2022-23: Not offeredOther years: Offered in Spring 2024
226 Unequal Footprints on the Earth: Understanding the Social Drivers of Ecological Crises and Environmental Inequality
(Offered as SOCI 226 and ENST 226) Creating a more sustainable relationship between human society and the rest of nature requires changing the way we relate to one another as humans. This course will explain why, while answering a number of associated questions and introducing the exciting and engaged field of environmental sociology. We study the anthropogenic drivers of environmental change from an interdisciplinary and historical perspective to make sense of pressing socio-ecological issues, including climate change, sustainability and justice in global food production, the disproportionate location of toxic waste disposal in communities of color, biodiversity loss, desertification, freshwater pollution and unequal access, the accumulation and trade in electronic waste, the ecological footprint of the Internet, and more. We examine how these issues are linked to broad inequalities within society, which are reflected in, and exacerbated by, persistent problems with environmental racism, the unaddressed legacies of colonialism, and other contributors to environmental injustice worldwide. Industrialization and the expansionary tendencies of the modern economic system receive particular attention, as these continue to be central factors promoting ecological change. Throughout the course a hopeful perspective in the face of such interrelated challenges is encouraged as we study promising efforts and movements that emphasize both ecological restoration and achievement of a more just, democratic world.
Course readings include foundational texts in environmental sociology, as well as the most current research on course topics. Writing and research assignments allow for the development of in-depth analyses of social and environmental issues relevant to students' community, everyday life, personal experience, and concerns.
Limited to 18 students. Fall semester. Professor Holleman.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Fall 2012, Fall 2013, Spring 2015, Fall 2016, Fall 2017, Fall 2018, Fall 2020, Fall 2021, Fall 2022
250 US Environmental Policy
This course is built around core readings on key policies and agencies of environmental governance in the US. It will provide students with a strong grasp of the most important environmental legislation in the United States (such as the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Clean Air Act). We will explore how existing environmental laws and institutions have provided important environmental protections, and also where they have fallen short. We will also ask how environmental racism and other forms of inequality have been addressed or exacerbated by historical policies, with an eye towards identifying promising alternatives in the future. Students will examine the relationships between local, state, and federal agencies carrying out environmental governance. This class will explore how policy is "political," and how it emerges from the actions of competing interest groups.
Pre-requisite: ENST-120. Fall 2022. Professor Ravikumar.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Fall 2022, Fall 2023
260 Global Environmental Politics
The effects of environmental problems, from climate change, to water contamination, to the depletion of fisheries, are felt acutely at the local level. But their underlying causes are often global: coal-burning power plants in China affects sea-level rise near Miami, overfishing by European fleets off the coast of Africa affects bush meat hunting in the Congo Basin, and deforestation in Indonesia creates forest fires that affect all of Southeast Asia’s air quality. Environmental issues are also fundamentally political: that is, they emerge through negotiations between different actors and groups with divergent interests and disparate degrees of power and influence. In this course, we will examine how environmental problems emerge through political processes that transcend national borders. Through foundational readings, in-depth classroom discussions, and team-based analysis of pressing contemporary cases, you will learn the tools of rigorous multi-level political and policy analysis. While we will emphasize that a global and explicitly political analysis is necessary to properly diagnose why environmental problems and conflicts emerge, we will focus on how these diagnoses suggest solutions. Coming out of this course, you will be better equipped to analyze how global politics are linked to local environmental issues, and to understand when different types of solutions – from small changes to policy, to international treaties, to protest and demands for radical systems change – are most likely to move the needle on environmental sustainability and justice.
Requisite: ENST 120. Limited to 35 students. Spring 2023. Professor Ravikumar.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Spring 2024
270 Food and the Environment: Towards Global Health, Justice, and Sustainable Development
(Offered as ENST-270 and SOCI-270) Food and farming make fundamental connections between humans and the earth. This course examines how agriculture, food systems, and rural development are entangled with environmental and social transformations around the world, and how we can cultivate solutions for global health, sustainability and social justice. Topics examined range from technological modernization and biotechnology to agroecology and food culture, malnutrition and obesity, food safety and environmental intoxication, land and labor struggles, race and gender issues in food systems, and from climate change to sustainable development. Readings draw from development studies and sociology, critical food and agrarian studies, political ecology and other interdisciplinary environmental studies. In addition to the lectures, students will cultivate critical thinking and improve skills in reading, writing, discussion, and creativity through dialogue, hands-on activities at the Book & Plow farm, creative exercises, and independent research.
Spring semester. Associate Professor Zhang.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Spring 2022, Fall 2023, Spring 2024
300 The Green New Deal
The Green New Deal has gained traction in the United States and around the world as a new approach to environmental policy and to redress structural inequalities linked to income and race. What is the Green New Deal, and how does it seem to transform environmental governance? In this course, we will explore key readings on the Green New Deal, and explore its connection to the original New Deal. We will examine how it relates to relevant literatures, such as environmental economics, political economy, critical race theory, and environmental sociology. We will critically debate the merits of various proposals for the Green New Deal using these frameworks and explore what it might take to translate these proposals into effective legislation. This class will equip students to contribute to a national conversation around these questions. Students will write weekly reflections, a policy brief or op-ed, and a research paper.
Pre-requisite: Background knowledge on climate change, environmental policy, or economics is recommended (e.g., courses such as ENST 226, 230, 252, 260, 330, 342 or POSC 112, 231, 307). Instructor permission required for students who have not taken ENST 120. Limited to 20 students. Fall 2022. Professor Ravikumar.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Fall 2022
301 Hydrogeology
(Offered as GEOL 301 and ENST 301) As the global human population expands in a future marked by climate change, the search for and preservation of our most vital resource, water, will demand thoughtful policy and greater scientific understanding. This course is an introduction to surface and groundwater hydrology, geochemistry, and management for natural systems and human needs. Lectures will focus on understanding the hydrologic cycle, how water flows over and within the earth, and the many ways in which this water is threatened by contamination and overuse. Three hours of lecture and three hours of lab each week. The laboratory will be centered around on-going local issues concerning use and restoration of the Fort River watershed.
Requisite: GEOL 109 or 111 or consent of the instructor. Fall semester. Professor Martini.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Spring 2012, Spring 2013, Spring 2015, Fall 2016, Fall 2018, Spring 2021, Spring 2022, Fall 2022
306 Pandemics and Society: The Socio-Ecological Construction of Infectious Diseases throughout History
(Offered as SOCI-306 and ENST-306) How and why do pandemics emerge? How have pandemics been shaped by social and ecological conditions around the world? And how do pandemics in turn transform society and our environment? This is a research-oriented interdisciplinary seminar examining how epidemic infectious diseases are not naturally given but socially and environmentally constructed. We will study the plague (including the Black Death), smallpox, dengue, malaria, cholera, tuberculosis, influenza, HIV, SARS, MERS, and COVID-19, and draw upon examples from all around the world throughout history. Special attention is given to environmental change and modernization, science and technology, state-making and globalization, migration and geopolitics, as well as class, race/ethnicity and gender inequalities. The seminar will draw on readings in sociology, anthropology, history, geography, public health, biology, epidemiology, political ecology, and other interdisciplinary fields. Lectures will be accompanied by discussion, and students will be required to undertake independent research, write a final essay, and present their work to the class. We will explore the possibility of publishing final essays as a collection.
Limited to 20 students. Spring semester. Professor Zhang.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Spring 2024
310 Ecosystem Ecology
This course examines the principles of ecosystem ecology, which facilitates our understanding of key environmental issues. We will focus on water and elemental cycling and energy flow in terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. Topics will include the Earth’s climate system, carbon cycling, nutrient cycling, disturbance regimes, succession, and ecosystem resilience. We will discuss how ecosystem structure and function relates to applied issues of conservation, sustainability, and responses to climate change.
Requisites: ENST-210 or consent of instructor. Spring 2023. Professor Hewitt.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023
314 Climate Justice Now
(Offered as ENST-314 and SOCI-314) A 2020 survey of nearly 21,000 adults in 28 countries conducted by the World Economic Forum and Ipsos found that 86% of people want to see a more equitable and sustainable world after the pandemic. Action on climate change is central to these goals. But what kind of action do we take? What are the targets of effective climate action? How can each of us contribute to the larger-scale changes needed to address global warming and work toward climate justice now? The goal of this course is to answer these questions by taking as our point of departure the 2022 report of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which provides the most comprehensive overview available of the international social science of climate change mitigation. This report shows real possibilities for keeping global temperatures below the more dangerous thresholds expected with “business as usual” if we take more urgent action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) across sectors. The report highlights that “collective action and social organising are crucial to shift the possibility space of public policy on climate change mitigation” and that explicit consideration of the principles of justice, equality, and fairness enables the acceleration of the transition to sustainability. Therefore, we focus on the evidence regarding how our actions to address climate change can improve lives and contribute to the just and fair society most of us want by transforming critical sectors, including, for example, transportation, electricity, and land use. This course involves experiential learning.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Fall 2023, Spring 2024
328 The Pandemic
(Offered as SOCI 328 and ENST 328) This course examines the root social and ecological conditions that gave rise to the COVID-19 pandemic and that help explain the significant inequalities we observe in terms of its impact. We study the structure and historical development of the global economy and the state, class and racial formation, the gendered division of society, and global ecological challenges, all of which provide necessary background to understand the pandemic’s emergence, effects, and the range of social response, including state policy. These studies include attention to the persistent consequences of colonialism, settler colonialism, and racial capitalism. We also study the contested nature of these developments, such as how movements and struggles over political power, economic development, racial justice, ecological protection, and public health, shape outcomes.
This course will be conducted in a hybrid format, with more of the course online and in-person meetings included as possible. Options for online-only participation will be available for those students unable to participate in person.
Limited to 15 students. Omitted 2021-22. Professors Holleman and Lembo.
2022-23: Not offeredOther years: Offered in Spring 2021
341 Ecology, Justice, and the Struggle for Socio-Ecological Change: Environmental Movements and Ideas
(Offered as SOCI 341 and ENST 341) Social movements—from the early conservation and anti-colonial movements that began over a century ago, to the modern climate justice movement—have worked to make environmental issues and inequalities part of the global political and policy agenda. The course draws upon sociological research that fosters an understanding of contemporary environmental debates, as well as the possibilities and obstacles we face in attempting to address socio-ecological problems. We study diverse global environmental movements and proposed environmental solutions, which reflect a wide range of perspectives and interests, as well as social inequalities. Inequality within and between countries means that different issues are at stake in negotiations addressing ecological problems for communities and people of different social locations. Race, ethnicity, class, gender, and position in the global economy affect both the way we experience socio-ecological change, and the ways we imagine and attempt to solve contemporary problems. Therefore, issues of environmental justice are highlighted as we study the history and achievements of environmental movements internationally, as well as enduring challenges and controversies. The syllabus is designed to benefit both the most seasoned environmentalists and students of the history of environmentalism, as well as participants for whom the course topics are new.
Limited to 20 students. Omitted 2021-22. Professor Holleman.
2022-23: Not offeredOther years: Offered in Spring 2013, Spring 2014, Fall 2014, Spring 2017, Spring 2018
342 Socio-Ecological Victories and Visions
(Offered as SOCI 342 and ENST 342) If you learn about the major trends shaping human societies and the rest of the planet in our era, you might ask these questions: How do we reduce the vast inequalities threatening democracy and undermining the self-determination of peoples around the world? How do we address global-scale crises like climate change, the pollution of the earth’s lands and waters, and anthropogenic extinction of species? How do we heal social divisions to build movements based on solidarity and reparation that transcend a “single-issue” focus while emphasizing the distinct needs of diverse communities? Can we imagine a society geared toward meeting culturally-determined human needs and deepening human happiness, while at the same time restoring the earth systems on which we depend? How do we engage such daunting issues with strength and, at times, joy?
These are massive questions now asked by scholars, scientists, activists, and communities around the world. This course explores answers to these questions through in-depth sociological analyses of critical victories and visions toward ecological and social change emerging internationally in the past decade. Such case studies represent hopeful challenges to the xenophobic, racist, anti-ecological, homophobic, misogynistic, winner-takes-all politics threatening much of life on earth.
Students must have at least one course in either SOCI or ANTH, or ENST 120, or other courses addressing the trends that are central to this course.
Limited to 18 students. Admission with consent of the instructor. Omitted 2021-22. Professor Holleman.
2022-23: Not offeredOther years: Offered in Spring 2019
374, 474 Population Ethics
(Offered as ENST 474 and PHIL 374) Is our planet overpopulated? And if so, how many of us should live on it? Population raises tricky questions that are both empirical and broadly philosophical: How should we weigh the well-being of future individuals against the lives of those currently living? Should we aim for a future population whose average or whose total level of well-being is maximized—or should we apply some other standard? Even more fundamentally: are we right to think of human life as, on balance, a positive thing? And how might a policy based on answers to such questions be weighed against rights to reproductive choice, and against considerations of justice? In this seminar, we will explore recent work in the emerging and fascinating field of population ethics. We will chart new areas for research, as well as for practical policy-making.
Requisite: At least one course in either ENST or PHIL. Limited to 15 students. Spring semester. Professor Moore.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023402 Wine, History and the Environment
(Offered as HIST 402 [TC/TE/C] and ENST 402.) Wine is as old as civilization, and is deeply wedded to religious and secular traditions around the world. Its production has transformed landscapes, ecosystems, and economies. In this course we examine how wine has shaped the history of Europe, North Africa, the Americas, and, increasingly, China. Through historical readings, scientific study, art, and class discussion, students will learn about such issues as the environmental impact of wine; the politics of taste and class; the organization of labor; the impact of imperialism and global trade; the late nineteenth-century phylloxera outbreak that almost destroyed the European wine industry; and the emergence of claims about terroir (the notion that each wine, like each culture, is uniquely tied to a place) and how such claims are anchored to regional and national identity. We will get our hands dirty with soil sampling, learn the basics of sediment analysis in the laboratory, and have a go at fermentation. Required field trips might include the taking of soil samples and planting of vines at Book and Plow Farm and a visit to a nearby winery. There also might be an optional multi-day oenology trip to New York’s Finger Lake district. Students who are using the course as their research seminar for History or LLAS will have one extra workshop each week to focus on the design and execution of an independent research project.
Limited to 20 students. This is a research seminar open to juniors and seniors. Spring semester. Professor López and Professor Martini.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Fall 2011, Fall 2012, Spring 2013, Spring 2014
430 Seminar on Fisheries
The dependency of many countries on marine organisms for food has resulted in severe population declines in cod, bluefin tuna, swordfish, and abalone, as well as numerous other marine organisms. In this seminar we will examine the sociological, political, and economic impacts of global depletion of fisheries. Questions addressed will be: What is the scope of extinctions or potential extinctions due to over-harvesting of marine organisms? How are fisheries managed, and are some approaches to harvesting better than others? How do fisheries extinctions affect the society and economy of various countries, and ecosystem stability? How do cultural traditions of fishermen influence attempts to manage fisheries? Does aquaculture offer a sustainable alternative to overfishing the seas, and what is aquaculture’s impact on ecosystem stability? Three class hours per week.
Requisite: ENST 120 or BIOL 230/ENST 210. Limited to 15 students. Spring semester. Professor Temeles.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Spring 2013, Spring 2021, Spring 2024
440, 441 Seminar in Conservation Biology
(Offered as BIOL 440 and ENST 441) Conservation biology is a highly interdisciplinary field, requiring careful consideration of biological, economic, and sociological issues. Solutions to biodiversity conservation and environmental challenges are even more complex. Yet, conservation is a topic of timely importance in order to safeguard biological diversity. Utilizing close reading and discussion of articles from the primary literature, the course will explore key topics including overexploitation (including connections between the wildlife trade and emergent diseases such as COVID-19), habitat fragmentation, climate change, restoration, protected areas, payments for ecosystem services, as well as how to determine appropriate conservation priorities. Three classroom hours per week.
Requisite: BIOL 230/ENST 210 or BIOL 320, or consent of the instructor. Not open to first-year students. Limited to 14 students. Spring Semester. Senior Lecturer Levin.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Spring 2012, Fall 2013, Fall 2015, Fall 2016, Spring 2018, Fall 2019, Fall 2020, Spring 2022
490 Special Topics
Independent reading course.
Fall and spring semesters. The Department.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022, Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Fall 2011, Spring 2012, Fall 2012, Spring 2013, Fall 2013, Spring 2014, Fall 2014, Spring 2015, Fall 2015, Spring 2016, Fall 2016, Spring 2017, Fall 2017, Spring 2018, Fall 2018, Spring 2019, Fall 2019, Spring 2020, Fall 2020, Spring 2021, Fall 2021, Spring 2022, Fall 2022
495 Senior Seminar
The Senior Seminar is the capstone course in the environmental studies major, which serves as the comprehensive requirement, and is taken by all seniors in the fall of their senior year. The diversity of student interests is one of the strengths of the environmental studies department at Amherst and the senior seminar captures this diversity by asking students to explore their own interests through substantial, original research on an environmental topic. The capstone is designed to be flexible to accommodate diverse interests and cultivate different skills, including finding and making sense of material from a variety of sources, articulating effective arguments, and gaining fluency in the communication of ideas.
Open to seniors. Fall semester. Professor Sims.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Fall 2022, Fall 2023
498, 499D Senior Honors
Fall semester. The Department.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Fall 2011, Fall 2012, Fall 2013, Fall 2014, Fall 2015, Fall 2016, Fall 2017, Fall 2018, Fall 2019, Fall 2020, January 2021, Fall 2021, January 2022, Spring 2022, Fall 2022, Fall 2023
499 Senior Departmental Honors
Spring semester. The Department.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Spring 2012, Spring 2013, Spring 2014, Spring 2015, Spring 2016, Spring 2017, Spring 2018, Spring 2019, Spring 2020, Spring 2021, Spring 2022, Spring 2024
Related Courses
Admission & Financial Aid
Admission & Financial Aid
BackEnvironmental Studies
Professors Clotfelter‡, López, Martini, Melillo (Chair), Miller†, Moore, Sims and Temeles; Associate Professor Holleman; Assistant Professors Hewitt, Ravikumar and Zhang; Senior Lecturer Levin†.
For many thousands of years, our ancestors were more shaped by the environment, than they were shapers of it. This began to change, first with hunting and then, roughly ten thousand years ago, with the beginnings of agriculture. Since then, humans have had a steadily increasing impact on the natural world. Environmental Studies explores the complex interactions between humans and their environment. This exploration requires grounding in the natural sciences, the humanities, and the social sciences.
Majors in Environmental Studies take a minimum of eleven courses that collectively reflect the subject’s interdisciplinary nature. The required introductory courses (ENST-110 and ENST-120) and senior seminar (ENST-495) are taught by faculty from the natural sciences, the social sciences, and humanities. The core courses include Ecology (ENST-210), Environmental History (ENST-105, ENST-220 or ENST-265), Economics (ENST-230 or ECON-111), Statistics/Research Methods (many course options), Environmental Policy (ENST-250 or ENST-260), and Environmental Justice (ENST-265 or ENST-330). Beyond these courses, majors must take two electives, including at least one course from each of two categories (Category I: Natural sciences and Category II: Social sciences and Humanities), which span different fields of environmental inquiry.
Majors are strongly encouraged to complete the introductory course by the end of their second year and the core requirements prior to their senior year. The senior seminar (ENST-495) offered in the fall semester, fulfills the comprehensive requirement.
The honors program in Environmental Studies involves two course credits. Majors electing to complete honors are required to submit a thesis proposal to the Department either in the spring of the junior year (if summer work is required) or at the beginning of the first semester of the senior year. Accepted candidates can take either an honors course in two successive semesters (ENST-498 & ENST-499) or take a double-credit course in the spring semester (ENST-499D).
Students who wish to satisfy a requirement with a Five College course or a course taken away from Amherst College must petition the Department in writing through the Chair and submit a syllabus or description of the course for approval. Students for whom Environmental Studies is a second major can count no more than two courses toward both majors.
* On leave 2022-23†On leave fall semester 2022-23‡On leave spring semester 2022-23
104, 220 Environmental Issues of the 19th Century
(Offered as HIST 104 [TR/c] and ENST 220) This course considers the ways that people in various parts of the world thought about and acted upon nature during the nineteenth century. We look historically at issues that continue to have relevance today, including: invasive species, deforestation, soil-nitrogen availability, water use, desertification, and air pollution. Themes include: the relationship of nineteenth-century colonialism and environmental degradation, gender and environmental change, the racial dimensions of ecological issues, and the spatial aspects of human interactions with nature. We will take at least one field trip. In addition, we will watch three films that approach nineteenth-century environmental issues from different vantage points. Two class meetings per week.
Limited to 18 students. Spring semester. Professor Melillo.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Spring 2012, Spring 2014, Spring 2015, Fall 2018, Spring 2020, Spring 2021
110 Environmental Science with laboratory
This course provides an introduction to environmental science. Students will gain an understanding of the function and interactions between the biological, chemical, and physical components of the biosphere and take a systems approach to addressing environmental issues. Lectures on the Earth’s physical and ecological systems, resource use and management, and pollution and toxicology will link central scientific concepts to case studies of regional, national, and global environmental concern. The laboratory will expose students to various tools, techniques, and methodologies used to study the natural environment and document problems. Through field studies and the analysis of data and scientific literature, we will explore air, water, soil, and vegetation processes and their connection to local and global environmental issues. Students will identify research questions, test hypotheses, develop sampling and analysis plans, execute various field and lab methods, and report scientific findings.
Limited to 16 students. Fall 2022. Professor Hewitt.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Fall 2022, Fall 2023
111E, 230 An Introduction to Economics with Environmental Applications
(Offered as ECON 111E and ENST 230) An introduction to the core theories and measures of markets and the current economic system. We study both microeconomics, which addresses the central problem of resource scarcity and how markets for individual goods and services function, and macroeconomics, which addresses the economy as a whole and key aggregate measures such as unemployment and inflation. Econ 111E covers the same material as ECON 111 but with special attention to the relationship between economic activity and environmental problems, including market failures, and to the application of economic tools to analyze environmental issues. A student may not receive credit for both ECON 111 and ECON 111E. Two 80-minute and one 50-minute lecture/discussions per week.
Admission with consent of the instructor. Limited to 25 Amherst College students. Spring semester. Professor Sims.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Fall 2012, Fall 2013, Fall 2014, Fall 2015, Fall 2016, Fall 2018, Spring 2020, Fall 2021, Spring 2022, Fall 2023
120 The Resilient (?) Earth: An Introduction to Environmental Studies
What is ‘the environment’ and why does it matter? What are the environmental impacts of “business as usual”? What kinds of environmental futures do we want to work towards and what are the alternatives? In this course, we will explore these and other questions that examine how and why we relate to the environment in the ways that we do and the social, ecological and ethical implications of these relationships. As an Introduction to Environmental Studies, this course seeks to (i) develop a common framework for understanding ‘the environment’ as a tightly coupled socio-natural enterprise, and (ii) familiarize students with several key environmental issues of the 21st century. One lecture and one discussion section per week.
Limited to 50 students. Spring semester. Senior Lecturer R. Levin and Professor Holleman.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Spring 2012, Spring 2013, Spring 2014, Spring 2015, Spring 2016, Spring 2017, Spring 2018, Spring 2019, Spring 2020, Spring 2021, Spring 2022, Spring 2024
207 The Wild and the Cultivated
(Offered as HIST 207 [TR/C] and ENST 207) For thousands of years, wild and domesticated plants have played crucial roles in the development of cultures and societies. Students in this course will consider human relationships with plants from a global-historical perspective, comparing trends in various regions and time periods. We will focus on the Neolithic Agricultural Revolution, seed-saving practices, medicinal plants, religious rites, food traditions, biopiracy, agribusiness, and biofuels. Two class meetings per week.
Limited to 30 students. Fall semester. Professor Melillo.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Spring 2019, Fall 2022
210, 230 Ecology
(Offered as BIOL 230 and ENST 210) A study of the relationships of plants and animals (including humans) to each other and to their environment. We'll start by considering the decisions an individual makes in its daily life concerning its use of resources, such as what to eat and where to live, and whether to defend such resources. We'll then move on to populations of individuals, and investigate species population growth, limits to population growth, and why some species are so successful as to become pests whereas others are on the road to extinction. The next level will address communities, and how interactions among populations, such as competition, predation, parasitism, and mutualism, affect the organization and diversity of species within communities. The final stage of the course will focus on ecosystems, and the effects of humans and other organisms on population, community, and global stability. Three hours of lecture per week.
Requisite: BIOL 181 or ENST 110 or equivalent. Limited to 40 students. Spring Semester. Professor Temeles.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Spring 2012, Fall 2012, Fall 2013, Fall 2014, Fall 2015, Fall 2016, Fall 2017, Fall 2018, Spring 2019, Spring 2020, Fall 2020, Fall 2021, Spring 2024
225 Climate Change: Science and Society
Understanding the connections between climate science and the societal impacts of climate change is key to addressing the global climate crisis. This course will critically examine climate change drivers, impacts, and solutions from the scientific and societal perspectives. Through lecture, discussion, and project work we will examine environmental responses to climate change, communication within the scientific community and by stakeholders, and adaptation and mitigation response strategies. Our examination of the science will be grounded by careful analysis of documents such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and will empower students to translate their understanding of the science into meaningful communication strategies designed to mitigate the effects of climate change. This course will emphasize verbal, written, and visual communication skills pertaining to climate change science.
Requisites: ENST-120, BIOL-181, GEOL-109, or consent of instructor. Limited to 18 students. Omit Spring 2023. Assistant Professor Hewitt.
2022-23: Not offeredOther years: Offered in Spring 2024
226 Unequal Footprints on the Earth: Understanding the Social Drivers of Ecological Crises and Environmental Inequality
(Offered as SOCI 226 and ENST 226) Creating a more sustainable relationship between human society and the rest of nature requires changing the way we relate to one another as humans. This course will explain why, while answering a number of associated questions and introducing the exciting and engaged field of environmental sociology. We study the anthropogenic drivers of environmental change from an interdisciplinary and historical perspective to make sense of pressing socio-ecological issues, including climate change, sustainability and justice in global food production, the disproportionate location of toxic waste disposal in communities of color, biodiversity loss, desertification, freshwater pollution and unequal access, the accumulation and trade in electronic waste, the ecological footprint of the Internet, and more. We examine how these issues are linked to broad inequalities within society, which are reflected in, and exacerbated by, persistent problems with environmental racism, the unaddressed legacies of colonialism, and other contributors to environmental injustice worldwide. Industrialization and the expansionary tendencies of the modern economic system receive particular attention, as these continue to be central factors promoting ecological change. Throughout the course a hopeful perspective in the face of such interrelated challenges is encouraged as we study promising efforts and movements that emphasize both ecological restoration and achievement of a more just, democratic world.
Course readings include foundational texts in environmental sociology, as well as the most current research on course topics. Writing and research assignments allow for the development of in-depth analyses of social and environmental issues relevant to students' community, everyday life, personal experience, and concerns.
Limited to 18 students. Fall semester. Professor Holleman.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Fall 2012, Fall 2013, Spring 2015, Fall 2016, Fall 2017, Fall 2018, Fall 2020, Fall 2021, Fall 2022
250 US Environmental Policy
This course is built around core readings on key policies and agencies of environmental governance in the US. It will provide students with a strong grasp of the most important environmental legislation in the United States (such as the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Clean Air Act). We will explore how existing environmental laws and institutions have provided important environmental protections, and also where they have fallen short. We will also ask how environmental racism and other forms of inequality have been addressed or exacerbated by historical policies, with an eye towards identifying promising alternatives in the future. Students will examine the relationships between local, state, and federal agencies carrying out environmental governance. This class will explore how policy is "political," and how it emerges from the actions of competing interest groups.
Pre-requisite: ENST-120. Fall 2022. Professor Ravikumar.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Fall 2022, Fall 2023
260 Global Environmental Politics
The effects of environmental problems, from climate change, to water contamination, to the depletion of fisheries, are felt acutely at the local level. But their underlying causes are often global: coal-burning power plants in China affects sea-level rise near Miami, overfishing by European fleets off the coast of Africa affects bush meat hunting in the Congo Basin, and deforestation in Indonesia creates forest fires that affect all of Southeast Asia’s air quality. Environmental issues are also fundamentally political: that is, they emerge through negotiations between different actors and groups with divergent interests and disparate degrees of power and influence. In this course, we will examine how environmental problems emerge through political processes that transcend national borders. Through foundational readings, in-depth classroom discussions, and team-based analysis of pressing contemporary cases, you will learn the tools of rigorous multi-level political and policy analysis. While we will emphasize that a global and explicitly political analysis is necessary to properly diagnose why environmental problems and conflicts emerge, we will focus on how these diagnoses suggest solutions. Coming out of this course, you will be better equipped to analyze how global politics are linked to local environmental issues, and to understand when different types of solutions – from small changes to policy, to international treaties, to protest and demands for radical systems change – are most likely to move the needle on environmental sustainability and justice.
Requisite: ENST 120. Limited to 35 students. Spring 2023. Professor Ravikumar.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Spring 2024
270 Food and the Environment: Towards Global Health, Justice, and Sustainable Development
(Offered as ENST-270 and SOCI-270) Food and farming make fundamental connections between humans and the earth. This course examines how agriculture, food systems, and rural development are entangled with environmental and social transformations around the world, and how we can cultivate solutions for global health, sustainability and social justice. Topics examined range from technological modernization and biotechnology to agroecology and food culture, malnutrition and obesity, food safety and environmental intoxication, land and labor struggles, race and gender issues in food systems, and from climate change to sustainable development. Readings draw from development studies and sociology, critical food and agrarian studies, political ecology and other interdisciplinary environmental studies. In addition to the lectures, students will cultivate critical thinking and improve skills in reading, writing, discussion, and creativity through dialogue, hands-on activities at the Book & Plow farm, creative exercises, and independent research.
Spring semester. Associate Professor Zhang.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Spring 2022, Fall 2023, Spring 2024
300 The Green New Deal
The Green New Deal has gained traction in the United States and around the world as a new approach to environmental policy and to redress structural inequalities linked to income and race. What is the Green New Deal, and how does it seem to transform environmental governance? In this course, we will explore key readings on the Green New Deal, and explore its connection to the original New Deal. We will examine how it relates to relevant literatures, such as environmental economics, political economy, critical race theory, and environmental sociology. We will critically debate the merits of various proposals for the Green New Deal using these frameworks and explore what it might take to translate these proposals into effective legislation. This class will equip students to contribute to a national conversation around these questions. Students will write weekly reflections, a policy brief or op-ed, and a research paper.
Pre-requisite: Background knowledge on climate change, environmental policy, or economics is recommended (e.g., courses such as ENST 226, 230, 252, 260, 330, 342 or POSC 112, 231, 307). Instructor permission required for students who have not taken ENST 120. Limited to 20 students. Fall 2022. Professor Ravikumar.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Fall 2022
301 Hydrogeology
(Offered as GEOL 301 and ENST 301) As the global human population expands in a future marked by climate change, the search for and preservation of our most vital resource, water, will demand thoughtful policy and greater scientific understanding. This course is an introduction to surface and groundwater hydrology, geochemistry, and management for natural systems and human needs. Lectures will focus on understanding the hydrologic cycle, how water flows over and within the earth, and the many ways in which this water is threatened by contamination and overuse. Three hours of lecture and three hours of lab each week. The laboratory will be centered around on-going local issues concerning use and restoration of the Fort River watershed.
Requisite: GEOL 109 or 111 or consent of the instructor. Fall semester. Professor Martini.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Spring 2012, Spring 2013, Spring 2015, Fall 2016, Fall 2018, Spring 2021, Spring 2022, Fall 2022
306 Pandemics and Society: The Socio-Ecological Construction of Infectious Diseases throughout History
(Offered as SOCI-306 and ENST-306) How and why do pandemics emerge? How have pandemics been shaped by social and ecological conditions around the world? And how do pandemics in turn transform society and our environment? This is a research-oriented interdisciplinary seminar examining how epidemic infectious diseases are not naturally given but socially and environmentally constructed. We will study the plague (including the Black Death), smallpox, dengue, malaria, cholera, tuberculosis, influenza, HIV, SARS, MERS, and COVID-19, and draw upon examples from all around the world throughout history. Special attention is given to environmental change and modernization, science and technology, state-making and globalization, migration and geopolitics, as well as class, race/ethnicity and gender inequalities. The seminar will draw on readings in sociology, anthropology, history, geography, public health, biology, epidemiology, political ecology, and other interdisciplinary fields. Lectures will be accompanied by discussion, and students will be required to undertake independent research, write a final essay, and present their work to the class. We will explore the possibility of publishing final essays as a collection.
Limited to 20 students. Spring semester. Professor Zhang.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Spring 2024
310 Ecosystem Ecology
This course examines the principles of ecosystem ecology, which facilitates our understanding of key environmental issues. We will focus on water and elemental cycling and energy flow in terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. Topics will include the Earth’s climate system, carbon cycling, nutrient cycling, disturbance regimes, succession, and ecosystem resilience. We will discuss how ecosystem structure and function relates to applied issues of conservation, sustainability, and responses to climate change.
Requisites: ENST-210 or consent of instructor. Spring 2023. Professor Hewitt.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023
314 Climate Justice Now
(Offered as ENST-314 and SOCI-314) A 2020 survey of nearly 21,000 adults in 28 countries conducted by the World Economic Forum and Ipsos found that 86% of people want to see a more equitable and sustainable world after the pandemic. Action on climate change is central to these goals. But what kind of action do we take? What are the targets of effective climate action? How can each of us contribute to the larger-scale changes needed to address global warming and work toward climate justice now? The goal of this course is to answer these questions by taking as our point of departure the 2022 report of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which provides the most comprehensive overview available of the international social science of climate change mitigation. This report shows real possibilities for keeping global temperatures below the more dangerous thresholds expected with “business as usual” if we take more urgent action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) across sectors. The report highlights that “collective action and social organising are crucial to shift the possibility space of public policy on climate change mitigation” and that explicit consideration of the principles of justice, equality, and fairness enables the acceleration of the transition to sustainability. Therefore, we focus on the evidence regarding how our actions to address climate change can improve lives and contribute to the just and fair society most of us want by transforming critical sectors, including, for example, transportation, electricity, and land use. This course involves experiential learning.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Fall 2023, Spring 2024
328 The Pandemic
(Offered as SOCI 328 and ENST 328) This course examines the root social and ecological conditions that gave rise to the COVID-19 pandemic and that help explain the significant inequalities we observe in terms of its impact. We study the structure and historical development of the global economy and the state, class and racial formation, the gendered division of society, and global ecological challenges, all of which provide necessary background to understand the pandemic’s emergence, effects, and the range of social response, including state policy. These studies include attention to the persistent consequences of colonialism, settler colonialism, and racial capitalism. We also study the contested nature of these developments, such as how movements and struggles over political power, economic development, racial justice, ecological protection, and public health, shape outcomes.
This course will be conducted in a hybrid format, with more of the course online and in-person meetings included as possible. Options for online-only participation will be available for those students unable to participate in person.
Limited to 15 students. Omitted 2021-22. Professors Holleman and Lembo.
2022-23: Not offeredOther years: Offered in Spring 2021
341 Ecology, Justice, and the Struggle for Socio-Ecological Change: Environmental Movements and Ideas
(Offered as SOCI 341 and ENST 341) Social movements—from the early conservation and anti-colonial movements that began over a century ago, to the modern climate justice movement—have worked to make environmental issues and inequalities part of the global political and policy agenda. The course draws upon sociological research that fosters an understanding of contemporary environmental debates, as well as the possibilities and obstacles we face in attempting to address socio-ecological problems. We study diverse global environmental movements and proposed environmental solutions, which reflect a wide range of perspectives and interests, as well as social inequalities. Inequality within and between countries means that different issues are at stake in negotiations addressing ecological problems for communities and people of different social locations. Race, ethnicity, class, gender, and position in the global economy affect both the way we experience socio-ecological change, and the ways we imagine and attempt to solve contemporary problems. Therefore, issues of environmental justice are highlighted as we study the history and achievements of environmental movements internationally, as well as enduring challenges and controversies. The syllabus is designed to benefit both the most seasoned environmentalists and students of the history of environmentalism, as well as participants for whom the course topics are new.
Limited to 20 students. Omitted 2021-22. Professor Holleman.
2022-23: Not offeredOther years: Offered in Spring 2013, Spring 2014, Fall 2014, Spring 2017, Spring 2018
342 Socio-Ecological Victories and Visions
(Offered as SOCI 342 and ENST 342) If you learn about the major trends shaping human societies and the rest of the planet in our era, you might ask these questions: How do we reduce the vast inequalities threatening democracy and undermining the self-determination of peoples around the world? How do we address global-scale crises like climate change, the pollution of the earth’s lands and waters, and anthropogenic extinction of species? How do we heal social divisions to build movements based on solidarity and reparation that transcend a “single-issue” focus while emphasizing the distinct needs of diverse communities? Can we imagine a society geared toward meeting culturally-determined human needs and deepening human happiness, while at the same time restoring the earth systems on which we depend? How do we engage such daunting issues with strength and, at times, joy?
These are massive questions now asked by scholars, scientists, activists, and communities around the world. This course explores answers to these questions through in-depth sociological analyses of critical victories and visions toward ecological and social change emerging internationally in the past decade. Such case studies represent hopeful challenges to the xenophobic, racist, anti-ecological, homophobic, misogynistic, winner-takes-all politics threatening much of life on earth.
Students must have at least one course in either SOCI or ANTH, or ENST 120, or other courses addressing the trends that are central to this course.
Limited to 18 students. Admission with consent of the instructor. Omitted 2021-22. Professor Holleman.
2022-23: Not offeredOther years: Offered in Spring 2019
374, 474 Population Ethics
(Offered as ENST 474 and PHIL 374) Is our planet overpopulated? And if so, how many of us should live on it? Population raises tricky questions that are both empirical and broadly philosophical: How should we weigh the well-being of future individuals against the lives of those currently living? Should we aim for a future population whose average or whose total level of well-being is maximized—or should we apply some other standard? Even more fundamentally: are we right to think of human life as, on balance, a positive thing? And how might a policy based on answers to such questions be weighed against rights to reproductive choice, and against considerations of justice? In this seminar, we will explore recent work in the emerging and fascinating field of population ethics. We will chart new areas for research, as well as for practical policy-making.
Requisite: At least one course in either ENST or PHIL. Limited to 15 students. Spring semester. Professor Moore.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023402 Wine, History and the Environment
(Offered as HIST 402 [TC/TE/C] and ENST 402.) Wine is as old as civilization, and is deeply wedded to religious and secular traditions around the world. Its production has transformed landscapes, ecosystems, and economies. In this course we examine how wine has shaped the history of Europe, North Africa, the Americas, and, increasingly, China. Through historical readings, scientific study, art, and class discussion, students will learn about such issues as the environmental impact of wine; the politics of taste and class; the organization of labor; the impact of imperialism and global trade; the late nineteenth-century phylloxera outbreak that almost destroyed the European wine industry; and the emergence of claims about terroir (the notion that each wine, like each culture, is uniquely tied to a place) and how such claims are anchored to regional and national identity. We will get our hands dirty with soil sampling, learn the basics of sediment analysis in the laboratory, and have a go at fermentation. Required field trips might include the taking of soil samples and planting of vines at Book and Plow Farm and a visit to a nearby winery. There also might be an optional multi-day oenology trip to New York’s Finger Lake district. Students who are using the course as their research seminar for History or LLAS will have one extra workshop each week to focus on the design and execution of an independent research project.
Limited to 20 students. This is a research seminar open to juniors and seniors. Spring semester. Professor López and Professor Martini.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Fall 2011, Fall 2012, Spring 2013, Spring 2014
430 Seminar on Fisheries
The dependency of many countries on marine organisms for food has resulted in severe population declines in cod, bluefin tuna, swordfish, and abalone, as well as numerous other marine organisms. In this seminar we will examine the sociological, political, and economic impacts of global depletion of fisheries. Questions addressed will be: What is the scope of extinctions or potential extinctions due to over-harvesting of marine organisms? How are fisheries managed, and are some approaches to harvesting better than others? How do fisheries extinctions affect the society and economy of various countries, and ecosystem stability? How do cultural traditions of fishermen influence attempts to manage fisheries? Does aquaculture offer a sustainable alternative to overfishing the seas, and what is aquaculture’s impact on ecosystem stability? Three class hours per week.
Requisite: ENST 120 or BIOL 230/ENST 210. Limited to 15 students. Spring semester. Professor Temeles.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Spring 2013, Spring 2021, Spring 2024
440, 441 Seminar in Conservation Biology
(Offered as BIOL 440 and ENST 441) Conservation biology is a highly interdisciplinary field, requiring careful consideration of biological, economic, and sociological issues. Solutions to biodiversity conservation and environmental challenges are even more complex. Yet, conservation is a topic of timely importance in order to safeguard biological diversity. Utilizing close reading and discussion of articles from the primary literature, the course will explore key topics including overexploitation (including connections between the wildlife trade and emergent diseases such as COVID-19), habitat fragmentation, climate change, restoration, protected areas, payments for ecosystem services, as well as how to determine appropriate conservation priorities. Three classroom hours per week.
Requisite: BIOL 230/ENST 210 or BIOL 320, or consent of the instructor. Not open to first-year students. Limited to 14 students. Spring Semester. Senior Lecturer Levin.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Spring 2012, Fall 2013, Fall 2015, Fall 2016, Spring 2018, Fall 2019, Fall 2020, Spring 2022
490 Special Topics
Independent reading course.
Fall and spring semesters. The Department.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022, Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Fall 2011, Spring 2012, Fall 2012, Spring 2013, Fall 2013, Spring 2014, Fall 2014, Spring 2015, Fall 2015, Spring 2016, Fall 2016, Spring 2017, Fall 2017, Spring 2018, Fall 2018, Spring 2019, Fall 2019, Spring 2020, Fall 2020, Spring 2021, Fall 2021, Spring 2022, Fall 2022
495 Senior Seminar
The Senior Seminar is the capstone course in the environmental studies major, which serves as the comprehensive requirement, and is taken by all seniors in the fall of their senior year. The diversity of student interests is one of the strengths of the environmental studies department at Amherst and the senior seminar captures this diversity by asking students to explore their own interests through substantial, original research on an environmental topic. The capstone is designed to be flexible to accommodate diverse interests and cultivate different skills, including finding and making sense of material from a variety of sources, articulating effective arguments, and gaining fluency in the communication of ideas.
Open to seniors. Fall semester. Professor Sims.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Fall 2022, Fall 2023
498, 499D Senior Honors
Fall semester. The Department.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Fall 2011, Fall 2012, Fall 2013, Fall 2014, Fall 2015, Fall 2016, Fall 2017, Fall 2018, Fall 2019, Fall 2020, January 2021, Fall 2021, January 2022, Spring 2022, Fall 2022, Fall 2023
499 Senior Departmental Honors
Spring semester. The Department.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Spring 2012, Spring 2013, Spring 2014, Spring 2015, Spring 2016, Spring 2017, Spring 2018, Spring 2019, Spring 2020, Spring 2021, Spring 2022, Spring 2024
Related Courses
Regulations & Requirements
Regulations & Requirements
Back- General Regulations
- Terms and Vacations
- Conduct
- Attendance at College Exercises
- Records and Reports
- Pass/Fail Option
- Examinations and Extensions
- Withdrawals
- Readmission
- Deficiencies
- Housing and Meal Plans
- Degree Requirements
- Course Requirements
- The Liberal Studies Curriculum
- The Major Requirement
- Departmental Majors
- Interdisciplinary Majors
- Comprehensive Requirement
- Degree with Honors
- Independent Scholar Program
- Field Study
- Five College Courses
- Academic Credit from Other Institutions
- Cooperative Doctor of Philosophy
- Engineering Exchange Program with Dartmouth
Environmental Studies
Professors Clotfelter‡, López, Martini, Melillo (Chair), Miller†, Moore, Sims and Temeles; Associate Professor Holleman; Assistant Professors Hewitt, Ravikumar and Zhang; Senior Lecturer Levin†.
For many thousands of years, our ancestors were more shaped by the environment, than they were shapers of it. This began to change, first with hunting and then, roughly ten thousand years ago, with the beginnings of agriculture. Since then, humans have had a steadily increasing impact on the natural world. Environmental Studies explores the complex interactions between humans and their environment. This exploration requires grounding in the natural sciences, the humanities, and the social sciences.
Majors in Environmental Studies take a minimum of eleven courses that collectively reflect the subject’s interdisciplinary nature. The required introductory courses (ENST-110 and ENST-120) and senior seminar (ENST-495) are taught by faculty from the natural sciences, the social sciences, and humanities. The core courses include Ecology (ENST-210), Environmental History (ENST-105, ENST-220 or ENST-265), Economics (ENST-230 or ECON-111), Statistics/Research Methods (many course options), Environmental Policy (ENST-250 or ENST-260), and Environmental Justice (ENST-265 or ENST-330). Beyond these courses, majors must take two electives, including at least one course from each of two categories (Category I: Natural sciences and Category II: Social sciences and Humanities), which span different fields of environmental inquiry.
Majors are strongly encouraged to complete the introductory course by the end of their second year and the core requirements prior to their senior year. The senior seminar (ENST-495) offered in the fall semester, fulfills the comprehensive requirement.
The honors program in Environmental Studies involves two course credits. Majors electing to complete honors are required to submit a thesis proposal to the Department either in the spring of the junior year (if summer work is required) or at the beginning of the first semester of the senior year. Accepted candidates can take either an honors course in two successive semesters (ENST-498 & ENST-499) or take a double-credit course in the spring semester (ENST-499D).
Students who wish to satisfy a requirement with a Five College course or a course taken away from Amherst College must petition the Department in writing through the Chair and submit a syllabus or description of the course for approval. Students for whom Environmental Studies is a second major can count no more than two courses toward both majors.
* On leave 2022-23†On leave fall semester 2022-23‡On leave spring semester 2022-23
104, 220 Environmental Issues of the 19th Century
(Offered as HIST 104 [TR/c] and ENST 220) This course considers the ways that people in various parts of the world thought about and acted upon nature during the nineteenth century. We look historically at issues that continue to have relevance today, including: invasive species, deforestation, soil-nitrogen availability, water use, desertification, and air pollution. Themes include: the relationship of nineteenth-century colonialism and environmental degradation, gender and environmental change, the racial dimensions of ecological issues, and the spatial aspects of human interactions with nature. We will take at least one field trip. In addition, we will watch three films that approach nineteenth-century environmental issues from different vantage points. Two class meetings per week.
Limited to 18 students. Spring semester. Professor Melillo.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Spring 2012, Spring 2014, Spring 2015, Fall 2018, Spring 2020, Spring 2021
110 Environmental Science with laboratory
This course provides an introduction to environmental science. Students will gain an understanding of the function and interactions between the biological, chemical, and physical components of the biosphere and take a systems approach to addressing environmental issues. Lectures on the Earth’s physical and ecological systems, resource use and management, and pollution and toxicology will link central scientific concepts to case studies of regional, national, and global environmental concern. The laboratory will expose students to various tools, techniques, and methodologies used to study the natural environment and document problems. Through field studies and the analysis of data and scientific literature, we will explore air, water, soil, and vegetation processes and their connection to local and global environmental issues. Students will identify research questions, test hypotheses, develop sampling and analysis plans, execute various field and lab methods, and report scientific findings.
Limited to 16 students. Fall 2022. Professor Hewitt.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Fall 2022, Fall 2023
111E, 230 An Introduction to Economics with Environmental Applications
(Offered as ECON 111E and ENST 230) An introduction to the core theories and measures of markets and the current economic system. We study both microeconomics, which addresses the central problem of resource scarcity and how markets for individual goods and services function, and macroeconomics, which addresses the economy as a whole and key aggregate measures such as unemployment and inflation. Econ 111E covers the same material as ECON 111 but with special attention to the relationship between economic activity and environmental problems, including market failures, and to the application of economic tools to analyze environmental issues. A student may not receive credit for both ECON 111 and ECON 111E. Two 80-minute and one 50-minute lecture/discussions per week.
Admission with consent of the instructor. Limited to 25 Amherst College students. Spring semester. Professor Sims.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Fall 2012, Fall 2013, Fall 2014, Fall 2015, Fall 2016, Fall 2018, Spring 2020, Fall 2021, Spring 2022, Fall 2023
120 The Resilient (?) Earth: An Introduction to Environmental Studies
What is ‘the environment’ and why does it matter? What are the environmental impacts of “business as usual”? What kinds of environmental futures do we want to work towards and what are the alternatives? In this course, we will explore these and other questions that examine how and why we relate to the environment in the ways that we do and the social, ecological and ethical implications of these relationships. As an Introduction to Environmental Studies, this course seeks to (i) develop a common framework for understanding ‘the environment’ as a tightly coupled socio-natural enterprise, and (ii) familiarize students with several key environmental issues of the 21st century. One lecture and one discussion section per week.
Limited to 50 students. Spring semester. Senior Lecturer R. Levin and Professor Holleman.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Spring 2012, Spring 2013, Spring 2014, Spring 2015, Spring 2016, Spring 2017, Spring 2018, Spring 2019, Spring 2020, Spring 2021, Spring 2022, Spring 2024
207 The Wild and the Cultivated
(Offered as HIST 207 [TR/C] and ENST 207) For thousands of years, wild and domesticated plants have played crucial roles in the development of cultures and societies. Students in this course will consider human relationships with plants from a global-historical perspective, comparing trends in various regions and time periods. We will focus on the Neolithic Agricultural Revolution, seed-saving practices, medicinal plants, religious rites, food traditions, biopiracy, agribusiness, and biofuels. Two class meetings per week.
Limited to 30 students. Fall semester. Professor Melillo.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Spring 2019, Fall 2022
210, 230 Ecology
(Offered as BIOL 230 and ENST 210) A study of the relationships of plants and animals (including humans) to each other and to their environment. We'll start by considering the decisions an individual makes in its daily life concerning its use of resources, such as what to eat and where to live, and whether to defend such resources. We'll then move on to populations of individuals, and investigate species population growth, limits to population growth, and why some species are so successful as to become pests whereas others are on the road to extinction. The next level will address communities, and how interactions among populations, such as competition, predation, parasitism, and mutualism, affect the organization and diversity of species within communities. The final stage of the course will focus on ecosystems, and the effects of humans and other organisms on population, community, and global stability. Three hours of lecture per week.
Requisite: BIOL 181 or ENST 110 or equivalent. Limited to 40 students. Spring Semester. Professor Temeles.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Spring 2012, Fall 2012, Fall 2013, Fall 2014, Fall 2015, Fall 2016, Fall 2017, Fall 2018, Spring 2019, Spring 2020, Fall 2020, Fall 2021, Spring 2024
225 Climate Change: Science and Society
Understanding the connections between climate science and the societal impacts of climate change is key to addressing the global climate crisis. This course will critically examine climate change drivers, impacts, and solutions from the scientific and societal perspectives. Through lecture, discussion, and project work we will examine environmental responses to climate change, communication within the scientific community and by stakeholders, and adaptation and mitigation response strategies. Our examination of the science will be grounded by careful analysis of documents such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and will empower students to translate their understanding of the science into meaningful communication strategies designed to mitigate the effects of climate change. This course will emphasize verbal, written, and visual communication skills pertaining to climate change science.
Requisites: ENST-120, BIOL-181, GEOL-109, or consent of instructor. Limited to 18 students. Omit Spring 2023. Assistant Professor Hewitt.
2022-23: Not offeredOther years: Offered in Spring 2024
226 Unequal Footprints on the Earth: Understanding the Social Drivers of Ecological Crises and Environmental Inequality
(Offered as SOCI 226 and ENST 226) Creating a more sustainable relationship between human society and the rest of nature requires changing the way we relate to one another as humans. This course will explain why, while answering a number of associated questions and introducing the exciting and engaged field of environmental sociology. We study the anthropogenic drivers of environmental change from an interdisciplinary and historical perspective to make sense of pressing socio-ecological issues, including climate change, sustainability and justice in global food production, the disproportionate location of toxic waste disposal in communities of color, biodiversity loss, desertification, freshwater pollution and unequal access, the accumulation and trade in electronic waste, the ecological footprint of the Internet, and more. We examine how these issues are linked to broad inequalities within society, which are reflected in, and exacerbated by, persistent problems with environmental racism, the unaddressed legacies of colonialism, and other contributors to environmental injustice worldwide. Industrialization and the expansionary tendencies of the modern economic system receive particular attention, as these continue to be central factors promoting ecological change. Throughout the course a hopeful perspective in the face of such interrelated challenges is encouraged as we study promising efforts and movements that emphasize both ecological restoration and achievement of a more just, democratic world.
Course readings include foundational texts in environmental sociology, as well as the most current research on course topics. Writing and research assignments allow for the development of in-depth analyses of social and environmental issues relevant to students' community, everyday life, personal experience, and concerns.
Limited to 18 students. Fall semester. Professor Holleman.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Fall 2012, Fall 2013, Spring 2015, Fall 2016, Fall 2017, Fall 2018, Fall 2020, Fall 2021, Fall 2022
250 US Environmental Policy
This course is built around core readings on key policies and agencies of environmental governance in the US. It will provide students with a strong grasp of the most important environmental legislation in the United States (such as the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Clean Air Act). We will explore how existing environmental laws and institutions have provided important environmental protections, and also where they have fallen short. We will also ask how environmental racism and other forms of inequality have been addressed or exacerbated by historical policies, with an eye towards identifying promising alternatives in the future. Students will examine the relationships between local, state, and federal agencies carrying out environmental governance. This class will explore how policy is "political," and how it emerges from the actions of competing interest groups.
Pre-requisite: ENST-120. Fall 2022. Professor Ravikumar.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Fall 2022, Fall 2023
260 Global Environmental Politics
The effects of environmental problems, from climate change, to water contamination, to the depletion of fisheries, are felt acutely at the local level. But their underlying causes are often global: coal-burning power plants in China affects sea-level rise near Miami, overfishing by European fleets off the coast of Africa affects bush meat hunting in the Congo Basin, and deforestation in Indonesia creates forest fires that affect all of Southeast Asia’s air quality. Environmental issues are also fundamentally political: that is, they emerge through negotiations between different actors and groups with divergent interests and disparate degrees of power and influence. In this course, we will examine how environmental problems emerge through political processes that transcend national borders. Through foundational readings, in-depth classroom discussions, and team-based analysis of pressing contemporary cases, you will learn the tools of rigorous multi-level political and policy analysis. While we will emphasize that a global and explicitly political analysis is necessary to properly diagnose why environmental problems and conflicts emerge, we will focus on how these diagnoses suggest solutions. Coming out of this course, you will be better equipped to analyze how global politics are linked to local environmental issues, and to understand when different types of solutions – from small changes to policy, to international treaties, to protest and demands for radical systems change – are most likely to move the needle on environmental sustainability and justice.
Requisite: ENST 120. Limited to 35 students. Spring 2023. Professor Ravikumar.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Spring 2024
270 Food and the Environment: Towards Global Health, Justice, and Sustainable Development
(Offered as ENST-270 and SOCI-270) Food and farming make fundamental connections between humans and the earth. This course examines how agriculture, food systems, and rural development are entangled with environmental and social transformations around the world, and how we can cultivate solutions for global health, sustainability and social justice. Topics examined range from technological modernization and biotechnology to agroecology and food culture, malnutrition and obesity, food safety and environmental intoxication, land and labor struggles, race and gender issues in food systems, and from climate change to sustainable development. Readings draw from development studies and sociology, critical food and agrarian studies, political ecology and other interdisciplinary environmental studies. In addition to the lectures, students will cultivate critical thinking and improve skills in reading, writing, discussion, and creativity through dialogue, hands-on activities at the Book & Plow farm, creative exercises, and independent research.
Spring semester. Associate Professor Zhang.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Spring 2022, Fall 2023, Spring 2024
300 The Green New Deal
The Green New Deal has gained traction in the United States and around the world as a new approach to environmental policy and to redress structural inequalities linked to income and race. What is the Green New Deal, and how does it seem to transform environmental governance? In this course, we will explore key readings on the Green New Deal, and explore its connection to the original New Deal. We will examine how it relates to relevant literatures, such as environmental economics, political economy, critical race theory, and environmental sociology. We will critically debate the merits of various proposals for the Green New Deal using these frameworks and explore what it might take to translate these proposals into effective legislation. This class will equip students to contribute to a national conversation around these questions. Students will write weekly reflections, a policy brief or op-ed, and a research paper.
Pre-requisite: Background knowledge on climate change, environmental policy, or economics is recommended (e.g., courses such as ENST 226, 230, 252, 260, 330, 342 or POSC 112, 231, 307). Instructor permission required for students who have not taken ENST 120. Limited to 20 students. Fall 2022. Professor Ravikumar.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Fall 2022
301 Hydrogeology
(Offered as GEOL 301 and ENST 301) As the global human population expands in a future marked by climate change, the search for and preservation of our most vital resource, water, will demand thoughtful policy and greater scientific understanding. This course is an introduction to surface and groundwater hydrology, geochemistry, and management for natural systems and human needs. Lectures will focus on understanding the hydrologic cycle, how water flows over and within the earth, and the many ways in which this water is threatened by contamination and overuse. Three hours of lecture and three hours of lab each week. The laboratory will be centered around on-going local issues concerning use and restoration of the Fort River watershed.
Requisite: GEOL 109 or 111 or consent of the instructor. Fall semester. Professor Martini.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Spring 2012, Spring 2013, Spring 2015, Fall 2016, Fall 2018, Spring 2021, Spring 2022, Fall 2022
306 Pandemics and Society: The Socio-Ecological Construction of Infectious Diseases throughout History
(Offered as SOCI-306 and ENST-306) How and why do pandemics emerge? How have pandemics been shaped by social and ecological conditions around the world? And how do pandemics in turn transform society and our environment? This is a research-oriented interdisciplinary seminar examining how epidemic infectious diseases are not naturally given but socially and environmentally constructed. We will study the plague (including the Black Death), smallpox, dengue, malaria, cholera, tuberculosis, influenza, HIV, SARS, MERS, and COVID-19, and draw upon examples from all around the world throughout history. Special attention is given to environmental change and modernization, science and technology, state-making and globalization, migration and geopolitics, as well as class, race/ethnicity and gender inequalities. The seminar will draw on readings in sociology, anthropology, history, geography, public health, biology, epidemiology, political ecology, and other interdisciplinary fields. Lectures will be accompanied by discussion, and students will be required to undertake independent research, write a final essay, and present their work to the class. We will explore the possibility of publishing final essays as a collection.
Limited to 20 students. Spring semester. Professor Zhang.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Spring 2024
310 Ecosystem Ecology
This course examines the principles of ecosystem ecology, which facilitates our understanding of key environmental issues. We will focus on water and elemental cycling and energy flow in terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. Topics will include the Earth’s climate system, carbon cycling, nutrient cycling, disturbance regimes, succession, and ecosystem resilience. We will discuss how ecosystem structure and function relates to applied issues of conservation, sustainability, and responses to climate change.
Requisites: ENST-210 or consent of instructor. Spring 2023. Professor Hewitt.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023
314 Climate Justice Now
(Offered as ENST-314 and SOCI-314) A 2020 survey of nearly 21,000 adults in 28 countries conducted by the World Economic Forum and Ipsos found that 86% of people want to see a more equitable and sustainable world after the pandemic. Action on climate change is central to these goals. But what kind of action do we take? What are the targets of effective climate action? How can each of us contribute to the larger-scale changes needed to address global warming and work toward climate justice now? The goal of this course is to answer these questions by taking as our point of departure the 2022 report of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which provides the most comprehensive overview available of the international social science of climate change mitigation. This report shows real possibilities for keeping global temperatures below the more dangerous thresholds expected with “business as usual” if we take more urgent action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) across sectors. The report highlights that “collective action and social organising are crucial to shift the possibility space of public policy on climate change mitigation” and that explicit consideration of the principles of justice, equality, and fairness enables the acceleration of the transition to sustainability. Therefore, we focus on the evidence regarding how our actions to address climate change can improve lives and contribute to the just and fair society most of us want by transforming critical sectors, including, for example, transportation, electricity, and land use. This course involves experiential learning.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Fall 2023, Spring 2024
328 The Pandemic
(Offered as SOCI 328 and ENST 328) This course examines the root social and ecological conditions that gave rise to the COVID-19 pandemic and that help explain the significant inequalities we observe in terms of its impact. We study the structure and historical development of the global economy and the state, class and racial formation, the gendered division of society, and global ecological challenges, all of which provide necessary background to understand the pandemic’s emergence, effects, and the range of social response, including state policy. These studies include attention to the persistent consequences of colonialism, settler colonialism, and racial capitalism. We also study the contested nature of these developments, such as how movements and struggles over political power, economic development, racial justice, ecological protection, and public health, shape outcomes.
This course will be conducted in a hybrid format, with more of the course online and in-person meetings included as possible. Options for online-only participation will be available for those students unable to participate in person.
Limited to 15 students. Omitted 2021-22. Professors Holleman and Lembo.
2022-23: Not offeredOther years: Offered in Spring 2021
341 Ecology, Justice, and the Struggle for Socio-Ecological Change: Environmental Movements and Ideas
(Offered as SOCI 341 and ENST 341) Social movements—from the early conservation and anti-colonial movements that began over a century ago, to the modern climate justice movement—have worked to make environmental issues and inequalities part of the global political and policy agenda. The course draws upon sociological research that fosters an understanding of contemporary environmental debates, as well as the possibilities and obstacles we face in attempting to address socio-ecological problems. We study diverse global environmental movements and proposed environmental solutions, which reflect a wide range of perspectives and interests, as well as social inequalities. Inequality within and between countries means that different issues are at stake in negotiations addressing ecological problems for communities and people of different social locations. Race, ethnicity, class, gender, and position in the global economy affect both the way we experience socio-ecological change, and the ways we imagine and attempt to solve contemporary problems. Therefore, issues of environmental justice are highlighted as we study the history and achievements of environmental movements internationally, as well as enduring challenges and controversies. The syllabus is designed to benefit both the most seasoned environmentalists and students of the history of environmentalism, as well as participants for whom the course topics are new.
Limited to 20 students. Omitted 2021-22. Professor Holleman.
2022-23: Not offeredOther years: Offered in Spring 2013, Spring 2014, Fall 2014, Spring 2017, Spring 2018
342 Socio-Ecological Victories and Visions
(Offered as SOCI 342 and ENST 342) If you learn about the major trends shaping human societies and the rest of the planet in our era, you might ask these questions: How do we reduce the vast inequalities threatening democracy and undermining the self-determination of peoples around the world? How do we address global-scale crises like climate change, the pollution of the earth’s lands and waters, and anthropogenic extinction of species? How do we heal social divisions to build movements based on solidarity and reparation that transcend a “single-issue” focus while emphasizing the distinct needs of diverse communities? Can we imagine a society geared toward meeting culturally-determined human needs and deepening human happiness, while at the same time restoring the earth systems on which we depend? How do we engage such daunting issues with strength and, at times, joy?
These are massive questions now asked by scholars, scientists, activists, and communities around the world. This course explores answers to these questions through in-depth sociological analyses of critical victories and visions toward ecological and social change emerging internationally in the past decade. Such case studies represent hopeful challenges to the xenophobic, racist, anti-ecological, homophobic, misogynistic, winner-takes-all politics threatening much of life on earth.
Students must have at least one course in either SOCI or ANTH, or ENST 120, or other courses addressing the trends that are central to this course.
Limited to 18 students. Admission with consent of the instructor. Omitted 2021-22. Professor Holleman.
2022-23: Not offeredOther years: Offered in Spring 2019
374, 474 Population Ethics
(Offered as ENST 474 and PHIL 374) Is our planet overpopulated? And if so, how many of us should live on it? Population raises tricky questions that are both empirical and broadly philosophical: How should we weigh the well-being of future individuals against the lives of those currently living? Should we aim for a future population whose average or whose total level of well-being is maximized—or should we apply some other standard? Even more fundamentally: are we right to think of human life as, on balance, a positive thing? And how might a policy based on answers to such questions be weighed against rights to reproductive choice, and against considerations of justice? In this seminar, we will explore recent work in the emerging and fascinating field of population ethics. We will chart new areas for research, as well as for practical policy-making.
Requisite: At least one course in either ENST or PHIL. Limited to 15 students. Spring semester. Professor Moore.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023402 Wine, History and the Environment
(Offered as HIST 402 [TC/TE/C] and ENST 402.) Wine is as old as civilization, and is deeply wedded to religious and secular traditions around the world. Its production has transformed landscapes, ecosystems, and economies. In this course we examine how wine has shaped the history of Europe, North Africa, the Americas, and, increasingly, China. Through historical readings, scientific study, art, and class discussion, students will learn about such issues as the environmental impact of wine; the politics of taste and class; the organization of labor; the impact of imperialism and global trade; the late nineteenth-century phylloxera outbreak that almost destroyed the European wine industry; and the emergence of claims about terroir (the notion that each wine, like each culture, is uniquely tied to a place) and how such claims are anchored to regional and national identity. We will get our hands dirty with soil sampling, learn the basics of sediment analysis in the laboratory, and have a go at fermentation. Required field trips might include the taking of soil samples and planting of vines at Book and Plow Farm and a visit to a nearby winery. There also might be an optional multi-day oenology trip to New York’s Finger Lake district. Students who are using the course as their research seminar for History or LLAS will have one extra workshop each week to focus on the design and execution of an independent research project.
Limited to 20 students. This is a research seminar open to juniors and seniors. Spring semester. Professor López and Professor Martini.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Fall 2011, Fall 2012, Spring 2013, Spring 2014
430 Seminar on Fisheries
The dependency of many countries on marine organisms for food has resulted in severe population declines in cod, bluefin tuna, swordfish, and abalone, as well as numerous other marine organisms. In this seminar we will examine the sociological, political, and economic impacts of global depletion of fisheries. Questions addressed will be: What is the scope of extinctions or potential extinctions due to over-harvesting of marine organisms? How are fisheries managed, and are some approaches to harvesting better than others? How do fisheries extinctions affect the society and economy of various countries, and ecosystem stability? How do cultural traditions of fishermen influence attempts to manage fisheries? Does aquaculture offer a sustainable alternative to overfishing the seas, and what is aquaculture’s impact on ecosystem stability? Three class hours per week.
Requisite: ENST 120 or BIOL 230/ENST 210. Limited to 15 students. Spring semester. Professor Temeles.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Spring 2013, Spring 2021, Spring 2024
440, 441 Seminar in Conservation Biology
(Offered as BIOL 440 and ENST 441) Conservation biology is a highly interdisciplinary field, requiring careful consideration of biological, economic, and sociological issues. Solutions to biodiversity conservation and environmental challenges are even more complex. Yet, conservation is a topic of timely importance in order to safeguard biological diversity. Utilizing close reading and discussion of articles from the primary literature, the course will explore key topics including overexploitation (including connections between the wildlife trade and emergent diseases such as COVID-19), habitat fragmentation, climate change, restoration, protected areas, payments for ecosystem services, as well as how to determine appropriate conservation priorities. Three classroom hours per week.
Requisite: BIOL 230/ENST 210 or BIOL 320, or consent of the instructor. Not open to first-year students. Limited to 14 students. Spring Semester. Senior Lecturer Levin.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Spring 2012, Fall 2013, Fall 2015, Fall 2016, Spring 2018, Fall 2019, Fall 2020, Spring 2022
490 Special Topics
Independent reading course.
Fall and spring semesters. The Department.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022, Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Fall 2011, Spring 2012, Fall 2012, Spring 2013, Fall 2013, Spring 2014, Fall 2014, Spring 2015, Fall 2015, Spring 2016, Fall 2016, Spring 2017, Fall 2017, Spring 2018, Fall 2018, Spring 2019, Fall 2019, Spring 2020, Fall 2020, Spring 2021, Fall 2021, Spring 2022, Fall 2022
495 Senior Seminar
The Senior Seminar is the capstone course in the environmental studies major, which serves as the comprehensive requirement, and is taken by all seniors in the fall of their senior year. The diversity of student interests is one of the strengths of the environmental studies department at Amherst and the senior seminar captures this diversity by asking students to explore their own interests through substantial, original research on an environmental topic. The capstone is designed to be flexible to accommodate diverse interests and cultivate different skills, including finding and making sense of material from a variety of sources, articulating effective arguments, and gaining fluency in the communication of ideas.
Open to seniors. Fall semester. Professor Sims.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Fall 2022, Fall 2023
498, 499D Senior Honors
Fall semester. The Department.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Fall 2011, Fall 2012, Fall 2013, Fall 2014, Fall 2015, Fall 2016, Fall 2017, Fall 2018, Fall 2019, Fall 2020, January 2021, Fall 2021, January 2022, Spring 2022, Fall 2022, Fall 2023
499 Senior Departmental Honors
Spring semester. The Department.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Spring 2012, Spring 2013, Spring 2014, Spring 2015, Spring 2016, Spring 2017, Spring 2018, Spring 2019, Spring 2020, Spring 2021, Spring 2022, Spring 2024
Related Courses
Amherst College Courses
Amherst College Courses
Back- American Studies
- Anthropology and Sociology
- Architectural Studies
- Art and the History of Art
- Asian Languages and Civilizations
- Biochemistry and Biophysics
- Biology
- Black Studies
- Chemistry
- Classics
- Colloquia
- Computer Science
- Creative Writing
- Economics
- Educational Studies
- English
- Environmental Studies
- European Studies
- Film and Media Studies
- First Year Seminar
- French
- Geology
- German
- History
- Latinx and Latin American Studies
- Law, Jurisprudence, and Social Thought
- Mathematics and Statistics
- Mellon Seminar
- Music
- Neuroscience
- Philosophy
- Physics and Astronomy
- Political Science
- Psychology
- Religion
- Russian
- Sexuality Wmn's & Gndr Studies
- Spanish
- Theater and Dance
- Courses of Instruction
- 01- Bruss Seminar
- 02- Kenan Colloquium
- 03- Linguistics
- 04- Mellon Seminar
- 05- Physical Education
- 06- Premedical Studies
- 07- Teaching
- 08- Five College Dance
Environmental Studies
Professors Clotfelter‡, López, Martini, Melillo (Chair), Miller†, Moore, Sims and Temeles; Associate Professor Holleman; Assistant Professors Hewitt, Ravikumar and Zhang; Senior Lecturer Levin†.
For many thousands of years, our ancestors were more shaped by the environment, than they were shapers of it. This began to change, first with hunting and then, roughly ten thousand years ago, with the beginnings of agriculture. Since then, humans have had a steadily increasing impact on the natural world. Environmental Studies explores the complex interactions between humans and their environment. This exploration requires grounding in the natural sciences, the humanities, and the social sciences.
Majors in Environmental Studies take a minimum of eleven courses that collectively reflect the subject’s interdisciplinary nature. The required introductory courses (ENST-110 and ENST-120) and senior seminar (ENST-495) are taught by faculty from the natural sciences, the social sciences, and humanities. The core courses include Ecology (ENST-210), Environmental History (ENST-105, ENST-220 or ENST-265), Economics (ENST-230 or ECON-111), Statistics/Research Methods (many course options), Environmental Policy (ENST-250 or ENST-260), and Environmental Justice (ENST-265 or ENST-330). Beyond these courses, majors must take two electives, including at least one course from each of two categories (Category I: Natural sciences and Category II: Social sciences and Humanities), which span different fields of environmental inquiry.
Majors are strongly encouraged to complete the introductory course by the end of their second year and the core requirements prior to their senior year. The senior seminar (ENST-495) offered in the fall semester, fulfills the comprehensive requirement.
The honors program in Environmental Studies involves two course credits. Majors electing to complete honors are required to submit a thesis proposal to the Department either in the spring of the junior year (if summer work is required) or at the beginning of the first semester of the senior year. Accepted candidates can take either an honors course in two successive semesters (ENST-498 & ENST-499) or take a double-credit course in the spring semester (ENST-499D).
Students who wish to satisfy a requirement with a Five College course or a course taken away from Amherst College must petition the Department in writing through the Chair and submit a syllabus or description of the course for approval. Students for whom Environmental Studies is a second major can count no more than two courses toward both majors.
* On leave 2022-23†On leave fall semester 2022-23‡On leave spring semester 2022-23
104, 220 Environmental Issues of the 19th Century
(Offered as HIST 104 [TR/c] and ENST 220) This course considers the ways that people in various parts of the world thought about and acted upon nature during the nineteenth century. We look historically at issues that continue to have relevance today, including: invasive species, deforestation, soil-nitrogen availability, water use, desertification, and air pollution. Themes include: the relationship of nineteenth-century colonialism and environmental degradation, gender and environmental change, the racial dimensions of ecological issues, and the spatial aspects of human interactions with nature. We will take at least one field trip. In addition, we will watch three films that approach nineteenth-century environmental issues from different vantage points. Two class meetings per week.
Limited to 18 students. Spring semester. Professor Melillo.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Spring 2012, Spring 2014, Spring 2015, Fall 2018, Spring 2020, Spring 2021
110 Environmental Science with laboratory
This course provides an introduction to environmental science. Students will gain an understanding of the function and interactions between the biological, chemical, and physical components of the biosphere and take a systems approach to addressing environmental issues. Lectures on the Earth’s physical and ecological systems, resource use and management, and pollution and toxicology will link central scientific concepts to case studies of regional, national, and global environmental concern. The laboratory will expose students to various tools, techniques, and methodologies used to study the natural environment and document problems. Through field studies and the analysis of data and scientific literature, we will explore air, water, soil, and vegetation processes and their connection to local and global environmental issues. Students will identify research questions, test hypotheses, develop sampling and analysis plans, execute various field and lab methods, and report scientific findings.
Limited to 16 students. Fall 2022. Professor Hewitt.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Fall 2022, Fall 2023
111E, 230 An Introduction to Economics with Environmental Applications
(Offered as ECON 111E and ENST 230) An introduction to the core theories and measures of markets and the current economic system. We study both microeconomics, which addresses the central problem of resource scarcity and how markets for individual goods and services function, and macroeconomics, which addresses the economy as a whole and key aggregate measures such as unemployment and inflation. Econ 111E covers the same material as ECON 111 but with special attention to the relationship between economic activity and environmental problems, including market failures, and to the application of economic tools to analyze environmental issues. A student may not receive credit for both ECON 111 and ECON 111E. Two 80-minute and one 50-minute lecture/discussions per week.
Admission with consent of the instructor. Limited to 25 Amherst College students. Spring semester. Professor Sims.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Fall 2012, Fall 2013, Fall 2014, Fall 2015, Fall 2016, Fall 2018, Spring 2020, Fall 2021, Spring 2022, Fall 2023
120 The Resilient (?) Earth: An Introduction to Environmental Studies
What is ‘the environment’ and why does it matter? What are the environmental impacts of “business as usual”? What kinds of environmental futures do we want to work towards and what are the alternatives? In this course, we will explore these and other questions that examine how and why we relate to the environment in the ways that we do and the social, ecological and ethical implications of these relationships. As an Introduction to Environmental Studies, this course seeks to (i) develop a common framework for understanding ‘the environment’ as a tightly coupled socio-natural enterprise, and (ii) familiarize students with several key environmental issues of the 21st century. One lecture and one discussion section per week.
Limited to 50 students. Spring semester. Senior Lecturer R. Levin and Professor Holleman.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Spring 2012, Spring 2013, Spring 2014, Spring 2015, Spring 2016, Spring 2017, Spring 2018, Spring 2019, Spring 2020, Spring 2021, Spring 2022, Spring 2024
207 The Wild and the Cultivated
(Offered as HIST 207 [TR/C] and ENST 207) For thousands of years, wild and domesticated plants have played crucial roles in the development of cultures and societies. Students in this course will consider human relationships with plants from a global-historical perspective, comparing trends in various regions and time periods. We will focus on the Neolithic Agricultural Revolution, seed-saving practices, medicinal plants, religious rites, food traditions, biopiracy, agribusiness, and biofuels. Two class meetings per week.
Limited to 30 students. Fall semester. Professor Melillo.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Spring 2019, Fall 2022
210, 230 Ecology
(Offered as BIOL 230 and ENST 210) A study of the relationships of plants and animals (including humans) to each other and to their environment. We'll start by considering the decisions an individual makes in its daily life concerning its use of resources, such as what to eat and where to live, and whether to defend such resources. We'll then move on to populations of individuals, and investigate species population growth, limits to population growth, and why some species are so successful as to become pests whereas others are on the road to extinction. The next level will address communities, and how interactions among populations, such as competition, predation, parasitism, and mutualism, affect the organization and diversity of species within communities. The final stage of the course will focus on ecosystems, and the effects of humans and other organisms on population, community, and global stability. Three hours of lecture per week.
Requisite: BIOL 181 or ENST 110 or equivalent. Limited to 40 students. Spring Semester. Professor Temeles.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Spring 2012, Fall 2012, Fall 2013, Fall 2014, Fall 2015, Fall 2016, Fall 2017, Fall 2018, Spring 2019, Spring 2020, Fall 2020, Fall 2021, Spring 2024
225 Climate Change: Science and Society
Understanding the connections between climate science and the societal impacts of climate change is key to addressing the global climate crisis. This course will critically examine climate change drivers, impacts, and solutions from the scientific and societal perspectives. Through lecture, discussion, and project work we will examine environmental responses to climate change, communication within the scientific community and by stakeholders, and adaptation and mitigation response strategies. Our examination of the science will be grounded by careful analysis of documents such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and will empower students to translate their understanding of the science into meaningful communication strategies designed to mitigate the effects of climate change. This course will emphasize verbal, written, and visual communication skills pertaining to climate change science.
Requisites: ENST-120, BIOL-181, GEOL-109, or consent of instructor. Limited to 18 students. Omit Spring 2023. Assistant Professor Hewitt.
2022-23: Not offeredOther years: Offered in Spring 2024
226 Unequal Footprints on the Earth: Understanding the Social Drivers of Ecological Crises and Environmental Inequality
(Offered as SOCI 226 and ENST 226) Creating a more sustainable relationship between human society and the rest of nature requires changing the way we relate to one another as humans. This course will explain why, while answering a number of associated questions and introducing the exciting and engaged field of environmental sociology. We study the anthropogenic drivers of environmental change from an interdisciplinary and historical perspective to make sense of pressing socio-ecological issues, including climate change, sustainability and justice in global food production, the disproportionate location of toxic waste disposal in communities of color, biodiversity loss, desertification, freshwater pollution and unequal access, the accumulation and trade in electronic waste, the ecological footprint of the Internet, and more. We examine how these issues are linked to broad inequalities within society, which are reflected in, and exacerbated by, persistent problems with environmental racism, the unaddressed legacies of colonialism, and other contributors to environmental injustice worldwide. Industrialization and the expansionary tendencies of the modern economic system receive particular attention, as these continue to be central factors promoting ecological change. Throughout the course a hopeful perspective in the face of such interrelated challenges is encouraged as we study promising efforts and movements that emphasize both ecological restoration and achievement of a more just, democratic world.
Course readings include foundational texts in environmental sociology, as well as the most current research on course topics. Writing and research assignments allow for the development of in-depth analyses of social and environmental issues relevant to students' community, everyday life, personal experience, and concerns.
Limited to 18 students. Fall semester. Professor Holleman.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Fall 2012, Fall 2013, Spring 2015, Fall 2016, Fall 2017, Fall 2018, Fall 2020, Fall 2021, Fall 2022
250 US Environmental Policy
This course is built around core readings on key policies and agencies of environmental governance in the US. It will provide students with a strong grasp of the most important environmental legislation in the United States (such as the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Clean Air Act). We will explore how existing environmental laws and institutions have provided important environmental protections, and also where they have fallen short. We will also ask how environmental racism and other forms of inequality have been addressed or exacerbated by historical policies, with an eye towards identifying promising alternatives in the future. Students will examine the relationships between local, state, and federal agencies carrying out environmental governance. This class will explore how policy is "political," and how it emerges from the actions of competing interest groups.
Pre-requisite: ENST-120. Fall 2022. Professor Ravikumar.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Fall 2022, Fall 2023
260 Global Environmental Politics
The effects of environmental problems, from climate change, to water contamination, to the depletion of fisheries, are felt acutely at the local level. But their underlying causes are often global: coal-burning power plants in China affects sea-level rise near Miami, overfishing by European fleets off the coast of Africa affects bush meat hunting in the Congo Basin, and deforestation in Indonesia creates forest fires that affect all of Southeast Asia’s air quality. Environmental issues are also fundamentally political: that is, they emerge through negotiations between different actors and groups with divergent interests and disparate degrees of power and influence. In this course, we will examine how environmental problems emerge through political processes that transcend national borders. Through foundational readings, in-depth classroom discussions, and team-based analysis of pressing contemporary cases, you will learn the tools of rigorous multi-level political and policy analysis. While we will emphasize that a global and explicitly political analysis is necessary to properly diagnose why environmental problems and conflicts emerge, we will focus on how these diagnoses suggest solutions. Coming out of this course, you will be better equipped to analyze how global politics are linked to local environmental issues, and to understand when different types of solutions – from small changes to policy, to international treaties, to protest and demands for radical systems change – are most likely to move the needle on environmental sustainability and justice.
Requisite: ENST 120. Limited to 35 students. Spring 2023. Professor Ravikumar.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Spring 2024
270 Food and the Environment: Towards Global Health, Justice, and Sustainable Development
(Offered as ENST-270 and SOCI-270) Food and farming make fundamental connections between humans and the earth. This course examines how agriculture, food systems, and rural development are entangled with environmental and social transformations around the world, and how we can cultivate solutions for global health, sustainability and social justice. Topics examined range from technological modernization and biotechnology to agroecology and food culture, malnutrition and obesity, food safety and environmental intoxication, land and labor struggles, race and gender issues in food systems, and from climate change to sustainable development. Readings draw from development studies and sociology, critical food and agrarian studies, political ecology and other interdisciplinary environmental studies. In addition to the lectures, students will cultivate critical thinking and improve skills in reading, writing, discussion, and creativity through dialogue, hands-on activities at the Book & Plow farm, creative exercises, and independent research.
Spring semester. Associate Professor Zhang.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Spring 2022, Fall 2023, Spring 2024
300 The Green New Deal
The Green New Deal has gained traction in the United States and around the world as a new approach to environmental policy and to redress structural inequalities linked to income and race. What is the Green New Deal, and how does it seem to transform environmental governance? In this course, we will explore key readings on the Green New Deal, and explore its connection to the original New Deal. We will examine how it relates to relevant literatures, such as environmental economics, political economy, critical race theory, and environmental sociology. We will critically debate the merits of various proposals for the Green New Deal using these frameworks and explore what it might take to translate these proposals into effective legislation. This class will equip students to contribute to a national conversation around these questions. Students will write weekly reflections, a policy brief or op-ed, and a research paper.
Pre-requisite: Background knowledge on climate change, environmental policy, or economics is recommended (e.g., courses such as ENST 226, 230, 252, 260, 330, 342 or POSC 112, 231, 307). Instructor permission required for students who have not taken ENST 120. Limited to 20 students. Fall 2022. Professor Ravikumar.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Fall 2022
301 Hydrogeology
(Offered as GEOL 301 and ENST 301) As the global human population expands in a future marked by climate change, the search for and preservation of our most vital resource, water, will demand thoughtful policy and greater scientific understanding. This course is an introduction to surface and groundwater hydrology, geochemistry, and management for natural systems and human needs. Lectures will focus on understanding the hydrologic cycle, how water flows over and within the earth, and the many ways in which this water is threatened by contamination and overuse. Three hours of lecture and three hours of lab each week. The laboratory will be centered around on-going local issues concerning use and restoration of the Fort River watershed.
Requisite: GEOL 109 or 111 or consent of the instructor. Fall semester. Professor Martini.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Spring 2012, Spring 2013, Spring 2015, Fall 2016, Fall 2018, Spring 2021, Spring 2022, Fall 2022
306 Pandemics and Society: The Socio-Ecological Construction of Infectious Diseases throughout History
(Offered as SOCI-306 and ENST-306) How and why do pandemics emerge? How have pandemics been shaped by social and ecological conditions around the world? And how do pandemics in turn transform society and our environment? This is a research-oriented interdisciplinary seminar examining how epidemic infectious diseases are not naturally given but socially and environmentally constructed. We will study the plague (including the Black Death), smallpox, dengue, malaria, cholera, tuberculosis, influenza, HIV, SARS, MERS, and COVID-19, and draw upon examples from all around the world throughout history. Special attention is given to environmental change and modernization, science and technology, state-making and globalization, migration and geopolitics, as well as class, race/ethnicity and gender inequalities. The seminar will draw on readings in sociology, anthropology, history, geography, public health, biology, epidemiology, political ecology, and other interdisciplinary fields. Lectures will be accompanied by discussion, and students will be required to undertake independent research, write a final essay, and present their work to the class. We will explore the possibility of publishing final essays as a collection.
Limited to 20 students. Spring semester. Professor Zhang.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Spring 2024
310 Ecosystem Ecology
This course examines the principles of ecosystem ecology, which facilitates our understanding of key environmental issues. We will focus on water and elemental cycling and energy flow in terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. Topics will include the Earth’s climate system, carbon cycling, nutrient cycling, disturbance regimes, succession, and ecosystem resilience. We will discuss how ecosystem structure and function relates to applied issues of conservation, sustainability, and responses to climate change.
Requisites: ENST-210 or consent of instructor. Spring 2023. Professor Hewitt.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023
314 Climate Justice Now
(Offered as ENST-314 and SOCI-314) A 2020 survey of nearly 21,000 adults in 28 countries conducted by the World Economic Forum and Ipsos found that 86% of people want to see a more equitable and sustainable world after the pandemic. Action on climate change is central to these goals. But what kind of action do we take? What are the targets of effective climate action? How can each of us contribute to the larger-scale changes needed to address global warming and work toward climate justice now? The goal of this course is to answer these questions by taking as our point of departure the 2022 report of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which provides the most comprehensive overview available of the international social science of climate change mitigation. This report shows real possibilities for keeping global temperatures below the more dangerous thresholds expected with “business as usual” if we take more urgent action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) across sectors. The report highlights that “collective action and social organising are crucial to shift the possibility space of public policy on climate change mitigation” and that explicit consideration of the principles of justice, equality, and fairness enables the acceleration of the transition to sustainability. Therefore, we focus on the evidence regarding how our actions to address climate change can improve lives and contribute to the just and fair society most of us want by transforming critical sectors, including, for example, transportation, electricity, and land use. This course involves experiential learning.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Fall 2023, Spring 2024
328 The Pandemic
(Offered as SOCI 328 and ENST 328) This course examines the root social and ecological conditions that gave rise to the COVID-19 pandemic and that help explain the significant inequalities we observe in terms of its impact. We study the structure and historical development of the global economy and the state, class and racial formation, the gendered division of society, and global ecological challenges, all of which provide necessary background to understand the pandemic’s emergence, effects, and the range of social response, including state policy. These studies include attention to the persistent consequences of colonialism, settler colonialism, and racial capitalism. We also study the contested nature of these developments, such as how movements and struggles over political power, economic development, racial justice, ecological protection, and public health, shape outcomes.
This course will be conducted in a hybrid format, with more of the course online and in-person meetings included as possible. Options for online-only participation will be available for those students unable to participate in person.
Limited to 15 students. Omitted 2021-22. Professors Holleman and Lembo.
2022-23: Not offeredOther years: Offered in Spring 2021
341 Ecology, Justice, and the Struggle for Socio-Ecological Change: Environmental Movements and Ideas
(Offered as SOCI 341 and ENST 341) Social movements—from the early conservation and anti-colonial movements that began over a century ago, to the modern climate justice movement—have worked to make environmental issues and inequalities part of the global political and policy agenda. The course draws upon sociological research that fosters an understanding of contemporary environmental debates, as well as the possibilities and obstacles we face in attempting to address socio-ecological problems. We study diverse global environmental movements and proposed environmental solutions, which reflect a wide range of perspectives and interests, as well as social inequalities. Inequality within and between countries means that different issues are at stake in negotiations addressing ecological problems for communities and people of different social locations. Race, ethnicity, class, gender, and position in the global economy affect both the way we experience socio-ecological change, and the ways we imagine and attempt to solve contemporary problems. Therefore, issues of environmental justice are highlighted as we study the history and achievements of environmental movements internationally, as well as enduring challenges and controversies. The syllabus is designed to benefit both the most seasoned environmentalists and students of the history of environmentalism, as well as participants for whom the course topics are new.
Limited to 20 students. Omitted 2021-22. Professor Holleman.
2022-23: Not offeredOther years: Offered in Spring 2013, Spring 2014, Fall 2014, Spring 2017, Spring 2018
342 Socio-Ecological Victories and Visions
(Offered as SOCI 342 and ENST 342) If you learn about the major trends shaping human societies and the rest of the planet in our era, you might ask these questions: How do we reduce the vast inequalities threatening democracy and undermining the self-determination of peoples around the world? How do we address global-scale crises like climate change, the pollution of the earth’s lands and waters, and anthropogenic extinction of species? How do we heal social divisions to build movements based on solidarity and reparation that transcend a “single-issue” focus while emphasizing the distinct needs of diverse communities? Can we imagine a society geared toward meeting culturally-determined human needs and deepening human happiness, while at the same time restoring the earth systems on which we depend? How do we engage such daunting issues with strength and, at times, joy?
These are massive questions now asked by scholars, scientists, activists, and communities around the world. This course explores answers to these questions through in-depth sociological analyses of critical victories and visions toward ecological and social change emerging internationally in the past decade. Such case studies represent hopeful challenges to the xenophobic, racist, anti-ecological, homophobic, misogynistic, winner-takes-all politics threatening much of life on earth.
Students must have at least one course in either SOCI or ANTH, or ENST 120, or other courses addressing the trends that are central to this course.
Limited to 18 students. Admission with consent of the instructor. Omitted 2021-22. Professor Holleman.
2022-23: Not offeredOther years: Offered in Spring 2019
374, 474 Population Ethics
(Offered as ENST 474 and PHIL 374) Is our planet overpopulated? And if so, how many of us should live on it? Population raises tricky questions that are both empirical and broadly philosophical: How should we weigh the well-being of future individuals against the lives of those currently living? Should we aim for a future population whose average or whose total level of well-being is maximized—or should we apply some other standard? Even more fundamentally: are we right to think of human life as, on balance, a positive thing? And how might a policy based on answers to such questions be weighed against rights to reproductive choice, and against considerations of justice? In this seminar, we will explore recent work in the emerging and fascinating field of population ethics. We will chart new areas for research, as well as for practical policy-making.
Requisite: At least one course in either ENST or PHIL. Limited to 15 students. Spring semester. Professor Moore.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023402 Wine, History and the Environment
(Offered as HIST 402 [TC/TE/C] and ENST 402.) Wine is as old as civilization, and is deeply wedded to religious and secular traditions around the world. Its production has transformed landscapes, ecosystems, and economies. In this course we examine how wine has shaped the history of Europe, North Africa, the Americas, and, increasingly, China. Through historical readings, scientific study, art, and class discussion, students will learn about such issues as the environmental impact of wine; the politics of taste and class; the organization of labor; the impact of imperialism and global trade; the late nineteenth-century phylloxera outbreak that almost destroyed the European wine industry; and the emergence of claims about terroir (the notion that each wine, like each culture, is uniquely tied to a place) and how such claims are anchored to regional and national identity. We will get our hands dirty with soil sampling, learn the basics of sediment analysis in the laboratory, and have a go at fermentation. Required field trips might include the taking of soil samples and planting of vines at Book and Plow Farm and a visit to a nearby winery. There also might be an optional multi-day oenology trip to New York’s Finger Lake district. Students who are using the course as their research seminar for History or LLAS will have one extra workshop each week to focus on the design and execution of an independent research project.
Limited to 20 students. This is a research seminar open to juniors and seniors. Spring semester. Professor López and Professor Martini.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Fall 2011, Fall 2012, Spring 2013, Spring 2014
430 Seminar on Fisheries
The dependency of many countries on marine organisms for food has resulted in severe population declines in cod, bluefin tuna, swordfish, and abalone, as well as numerous other marine organisms. In this seminar we will examine the sociological, political, and economic impacts of global depletion of fisheries. Questions addressed will be: What is the scope of extinctions or potential extinctions due to over-harvesting of marine organisms? How are fisheries managed, and are some approaches to harvesting better than others? How do fisheries extinctions affect the society and economy of various countries, and ecosystem stability? How do cultural traditions of fishermen influence attempts to manage fisheries? Does aquaculture offer a sustainable alternative to overfishing the seas, and what is aquaculture’s impact on ecosystem stability? Three class hours per week.
Requisite: ENST 120 or BIOL 230/ENST 210. Limited to 15 students. Spring semester. Professor Temeles.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Spring 2013, Spring 2021, Spring 2024
440, 441 Seminar in Conservation Biology
(Offered as BIOL 440 and ENST 441) Conservation biology is a highly interdisciplinary field, requiring careful consideration of biological, economic, and sociological issues. Solutions to biodiversity conservation and environmental challenges are even more complex. Yet, conservation is a topic of timely importance in order to safeguard biological diversity. Utilizing close reading and discussion of articles from the primary literature, the course will explore key topics including overexploitation (including connections between the wildlife trade and emergent diseases such as COVID-19), habitat fragmentation, climate change, restoration, protected areas, payments for ecosystem services, as well as how to determine appropriate conservation priorities. Three classroom hours per week.
Requisite: BIOL 230/ENST 210 or BIOL 320, or consent of the instructor. Not open to first-year students. Limited to 14 students. Spring Semester. Senior Lecturer Levin.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Spring 2012, Fall 2013, Fall 2015, Fall 2016, Spring 2018, Fall 2019, Fall 2020, Spring 2022
490 Special Topics
Independent reading course.
Fall and spring semesters. The Department.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022, Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Fall 2011, Spring 2012, Fall 2012, Spring 2013, Fall 2013, Spring 2014, Fall 2014, Spring 2015, Fall 2015, Spring 2016, Fall 2016, Spring 2017, Fall 2017, Spring 2018, Fall 2018, Spring 2019, Fall 2019, Spring 2020, Fall 2020, Spring 2021, Fall 2021, Spring 2022, Fall 2022
495 Senior Seminar
The Senior Seminar is the capstone course in the environmental studies major, which serves as the comprehensive requirement, and is taken by all seniors in the fall of their senior year. The diversity of student interests is one of the strengths of the environmental studies department at Amherst and the senior seminar captures this diversity by asking students to explore their own interests through substantial, original research on an environmental topic. The capstone is designed to be flexible to accommodate diverse interests and cultivate different skills, including finding and making sense of material from a variety of sources, articulating effective arguments, and gaining fluency in the communication of ideas.
Open to seniors. Fall semester. Professor Sims.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Fall 2022, Fall 2023
498, 499D Senior Honors
Fall semester. The Department.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Fall 2011, Fall 2012, Fall 2013, Fall 2014, Fall 2015, Fall 2016, Fall 2017, Fall 2018, Fall 2019, Fall 2020, January 2021, Fall 2021, January 2022, Spring 2022, Fall 2022, Fall 2023
499 Senior Departmental Honors
Spring semester. The Department.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Spring 2012, Spring 2013, Spring 2014, Spring 2015, Spring 2016, Spring 2017, Spring 2018, Spring 2019, Spring 2020, Spring 2021, Spring 2022, Spring 2024
Related Courses
Five College Programs & Certificates
Five College Programs & Certificates
Back- Five College Courses
- African Studies Certificate
- Asian Pacific American Studies Certificate
- Biomathematics
- Buddhist Studies Certificate
- Coastal and Marine Sciences Certificate
- Culture Health Science Certificate
- Ethnomusicology Certificate
- International Relations Certificate
- Latin American Caribbean Latino Studies Certificate
- Logic Certificate
- Middle Eastern Studies Certificate
- Native American and Indigenous Studies Certificate
- Queer and Sexuality Studies Certificate
- Reproductive Health, Rights and Justice Certificate
- Russian East European Eurasian Studies Certificate
- Sustainability Studies Certificate
Environmental Studies
Professors Clotfelter‡, López, Martini, Melillo (Chair), Miller†, Moore, Sims and Temeles; Associate Professor Holleman; Assistant Professors Hewitt, Ravikumar and Zhang; Senior Lecturer Levin†.
For many thousands of years, our ancestors were more shaped by the environment, than they were shapers of it. This began to change, first with hunting and then, roughly ten thousand years ago, with the beginnings of agriculture. Since then, humans have had a steadily increasing impact on the natural world. Environmental Studies explores the complex interactions between humans and their environment. This exploration requires grounding in the natural sciences, the humanities, and the social sciences.
Majors in Environmental Studies take a minimum of eleven courses that collectively reflect the subject’s interdisciplinary nature. The required introductory courses (ENST-110 and ENST-120) and senior seminar (ENST-495) are taught by faculty from the natural sciences, the social sciences, and humanities. The core courses include Ecology (ENST-210), Environmental History (ENST-105, ENST-220 or ENST-265), Economics (ENST-230 or ECON-111), Statistics/Research Methods (many course options), Environmental Policy (ENST-250 or ENST-260), and Environmental Justice (ENST-265 or ENST-330). Beyond these courses, majors must take two electives, including at least one course from each of two categories (Category I: Natural sciences and Category II: Social sciences and Humanities), which span different fields of environmental inquiry.
Majors are strongly encouraged to complete the introductory course by the end of their second year and the core requirements prior to their senior year. The senior seminar (ENST-495) offered in the fall semester, fulfills the comprehensive requirement.
The honors program in Environmental Studies involves two course credits. Majors electing to complete honors are required to submit a thesis proposal to the Department either in the spring of the junior year (if summer work is required) or at the beginning of the first semester of the senior year. Accepted candidates can take either an honors course in two successive semesters (ENST-498 & ENST-499) or take a double-credit course in the spring semester (ENST-499D).
Students who wish to satisfy a requirement with a Five College course or a course taken away from Amherst College must petition the Department in writing through the Chair and submit a syllabus or description of the course for approval. Students for whom Environmental Studies is a second major can count no more than two courses toward both majors.
* On leave 2022-23†On leave fall semester 2022-23‡On leave spring semester 2022-23
104, 220 Environmental Issues of the 19th Century
(Offered as HIST 104 [TR/c] and ENST 220) This course considers the ways that people in various parts of the world thought about and acted upon nature during the nineteenth century. We look historically at issues that continue to have relevance today, including: invasive species, deforestation, soil-nitrogen availability, water use, desertification, and air pollution. Themes include: the relationship of nineteenth-century colonialism and environmental degradation, gender and environmental change, the racial dimensions of ecological issues, and the spatial aspects of human interactions with nature. We will take at least one field trip. In addition, we will watch three films that approach nineteenth-century environmental issues from different vantage points. Two class meetings per week.
Limited to 18 students. Spring semester. Professor Melillo.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Spring 2012, Spring 2014, Spring 2015, Fall 2018, Spring 2020, Spring 2021
110 Environmental Science with laboratory
This course provides an introduction to environmental science. Students will gain an understanding of the function and interactions between the biological, chemical, and physical components of the biosphere and take a systems approach to addressing environmental issues. Lectures on the Earth’s physical and ecological systems, resource use and management, and pollution and toxicology will link central scientific concepts to case studies of regional, national, and global environmental concern. The laboratory will expose students to various tools, techniques, and methodologies used to study the natural environment and document problems. Through field studies and the analysis of data and scientific literature, we will explore air, water, soil, and vegetation processes and their connection to local and global environmental issues. Students will identify research questions, test hypotheses, develop sampling and analysis plans, execute various field and lab methods, and report scientific findings.
Limited to 16 students. Fall 2022. Professor Hewitt.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Fall 2022, Fall 2023
111E, 230 An Introduction to Economics with Environmental Applications
(Offered as ECON 111E and ENST 230) An introduction to the core theories and measures of markets and the current economic system. We study both microeconomics, which addresses the central problem of resource scarcity and how markets for individual goods and services function, and macroeconomics, which addresses the economy as a whole and key aggregate measures such as unemployment and inflation. Econ 111E covers the same material as ECON 111 but with special attention to the relationship between economic activity and environmental problems, including market failures, and to the application of economic tools to analyze environmental issues. A student may not receive credit for both ECON 111 and ECON 111E. Two 80-minute and one 50-minute lecture/discussions per week.
Admission with consent of the instructor. Limited to 25 Amherst College students. Spring semester. Professor Sims.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Fall 2012, Fall 2013, Fall 2014, Fall 2015, Fall 2016, Fall 2018, Spring 2020, Fall 2021, Spring 2022, Fall 2023
120 The Resilient (?) Earth: An Introduction to Environmental Studies
What is ‘the environment’ and why does it matter? What are the environmental impacts of “business as usual”? What kinds of environmental futures do we want to work towards and what are the alternatives? In this course, we will explore these and other questions that examine how and why we relate to the environment in the ways that we do and the social, ecological and ethical implications of these relationships. As an Introduction to Environmental Studies, this course seeks to (i) develop a common framework for understanding ‘the environment’ as a tightly coupled socio-natural enterprise, and (ii) familiarize students with several key environmental issues of the 21st century. One lecture and one discussion section per week.
Limited to 50 students. Spring semester. Senior Lecturer R. Levin and Professor Holleman.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Spring 2012, Spring 2013, Spring 2014, Spring 2015, Spring 2016, Spring 2017, Spring 2018, Spring 2019, Spring 2020, Spring 2021, Spring 2022, Spring 2024
207 The Wild and the Cultivated
(Offered as HIST 207 [TR/C] and ENST 207) For thousands of years, wild and domesticated plants have played crucial roles in the development of cultures and societies. Students in this course will consider human relationships with plants from a global-historical perspective, comparing trends in various regions and time periods. We will focus on the Neolithic Agricultural Revolution, seed-saving practices, medicinal plants, religious rites, food traditions, biopiracy, agribusiness, and biofuels. Two class meetings per week.
Limited to 30 students. Fall semester. Professor Melillo.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Spring 2019, Fall 2022
210, 230 Ecology
(Offered as BIOL 230 and ENST 210) A study of the relationships of plants and animals (including humans) to each other and to their environment. We'll start by considering the decisions an individual makes in its daily life concerning its use of resources, such as what to eat and where to live, and whether to defend such resources. We'll then move on to populations of individuals, and investigate species population growth, limits to population growth, and why some species are so successful as to become pests whereas others are on the road to extinction. The next level will address communities, and how interactions among populations, such as competition, predation, parasitism, and mutualism, affect the organization and diversity of species within communities. The final stage of the course will focus on ecosystems, and the effects of humans and other organisms on population, community, and global stability. Three hours of lecture per week.
Requisite: BIOL 181 or ENST 110 or equivalent. Limited to 40 students. Spring Semester. Professor Temeles.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Spring 2012, Fall 2012, Fall 2013, Fall 2014, Fall 2015, Fall 2016, Fall 2017, Fall 2018, Spring 2019, Spring 2020, Fall 2020, Fall 2021, Spring 2024
225 Climate Change: Science and Society
Understanding the connections between climate science and the societal impacts of climate change is key to addressing the global climate crisis. This course will critically examine climate change drivers, impacts, and solutions from the scientific and societal perspectives. Through lecture, discussion, and project work we will examine environmental responses to climate change, communication within the scientific community and by stakeholders, and adaptation and mitigation response strategies. Our examination of the science will be grounded by careful analysis of documents such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and will empower students to translate their understanding of the science into meaningful communication strategies designed to mitigate the effects of climate change. This course will emphasize verbal, written, and visual communication skills pertaining to climate change science.
Requisites: ENST-120, BIOL-181, GEOL-109, or consent of instructor. Limited to 18 students. Omit Spring 2023. Assistant Professor Hewitt.
2022-23: Not offeredOther years: Offered in Spring 2024
226 Unequal Footprints on the Earth: Understanding the Social Drivers of Ecological Crises and Environmental Inequality
(Offered as SOCI 226 and ENST 226) Creating a more sustainable relationship between human society and the rest of nature requires changing the way we relate to one another as humans. This course will explain why, while answering a number of associated questions and introducing the exciting and engaged field of environmental sociology. We study the anthropogenic drivers of environmental change from an interdisciplinary and historical perspective to make sense of pressing socio-ecological issues, including climate change, sustainability and justice in global food production, the disproportionate location of toxic waste disposal in communities of color, biodiversity loss, desertification, freshwater pollution and unequal access, the accumulation and trade in electronic waste, the ecological footprint of the Internet, and more. We examine how these issues are linked to broad inequalities within society, which are reflected in, and exacerbated by, persistent problems with environmental racism, the unaddressed legacies of colonialism, and other contributors to environmental injustice worldwide. Industrialization and the expansionary tendencies of the modern economic system receive particular attention, as these continue to be central factors promoting ecological change. Throughout the course a hopeful perspective in the face of such interrelated challenges is encouraged as we study promising efforts and movements that emphasize both ecological restoration and achievement of a more just, democratic world.
Course readings include foundational texts in environmental sociology, as well as the most current research on course topics. Writing and research assignments allow for the development of in-depth analyses of social and environmental issues relevant to students' community, everyday life, personal experience, and concerns.
Limited to 18 students. Fall semester. Professor Holleman.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Fall 2012, Fall 2013, Spring 2015, Fall 2016, Fall 2017, Fall 2018, Fall 2020, Fall 2021, Fall 2022
250 US Environmental Policy
This course is built around core readings on key policies and agencies of environmental governance in the US. It will provide students with a strong grasp of the most important environmental legislation in the United States (such as the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Clean Air Act). We will explore how existing environmental laws and institutions have provided important environmental protections, and also where they have fallen short. We will also ask how environmental racism and other forms of inequality have been addressed or exacerbated by historical policies, with an eye towards identifying promising alternatives in the future. Students will examine the relationships between local, state, and federal agencies carrying out environmental governance. This class will explore how policy is "political," and how it emerges from the actions of competing interest groups.
Pre-requisite: ENST-120. Fall 2022. Professor Ravikumar.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Fall 2022, Fall 2023
260 Global Environmental Politics
The effects of environmental problems, from climate change, to water contamination, to the depletion of fisheries, are felt acutely at the local level. But their underlying causes are often global: coal-burning power plants in China affects sea-level rise near Miami, overfishing by European fleets off the coast of Africa affects bush meat hunting in the Congo Basin, and deforestation in Indonesia creates forest fires that affect all of Southeast Asia’s air quality. Environmental issues are also fundamentally political: that is, they emerge through negotiations between different actors and groups with divergent interests and disparate degrees of power and influence. In this course, we will examine how environmental problems emerge through political processes that transcend national borders. Through foundational readings, in-depth classroom discussions, and team-based analysis of pressing contemporary cases, you will learn the tools of rigorous multi-level political and policy analysis. While we will emphasize that a global and explicitly political analysis is necessary to properly diagnose why environmental problems and conflicts emerge, we will focus on how these diagnoses suggest solutions. Coming out of this course, you will be better equipped to analyze how global politics are linked to local environmental issues, and to understand when different types of solutions – from small changes to policy, to international treaties, to protest and demands for radical systems change – are most likely to move the needle on environmental sustainability and justice.
Requisite: ENST 120. Limited to 35 students. Spring 2023. Professor Ravikumar.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Spring 2024
270 Food and the Environment: Towards Global Health, Justice, and Sustainable Development
(Offered as ENST-270 and SOCI-270) Food and farming make fundamental connections between humans and the earth. This course examines how agriculture, food systems, and rural development are entangled with environmental and social transformations around the world, and how we can cultivate solutions for global health, sustainability and social justice. Topics examined range from technological modernization and biotechnology to agroecology and food culture, malnutrition and obesity, food safety and environmental intoxication, land and labor struggles, race and gender issues in food systems, and from climate change to sustainable development. Readings draw from development studies and sociology, critical food and agrarian studies, political ecology and other interdisciplinary environmental studies. In addition to the lectures, students will cultivate critical thinking and improve skills in reading, writing, discussion, and creativity through dialogue, hands-on activities at the Book & Plow farm, creative exercises, and independent research.
Spring semester. Associate Professor Zhang.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Spring 2022, Fall 2023, Spring 2024
300 The Green New Deal
The Green New Deal has gained traction in the United States and around the world as a new approach to environmental policy and to redress structural inequalities linked to income and race. What is the Green New Deal, and how does it seem to transform environmental governance? In this course, we will explore key readings on the Green New Deal, and explore its connection to the original New Deal. We will examine how it relates to relevant literatures, such as environmental economics, political economy, critical race theory, and environmental sociology. We will critically debate the merits of various proposals for the Green New Deal using these frameworks and explore what it might take to translate these proposals into effective legislation. This class will equip students to contribute to a national conversation around these questions. Students will write weekly reflections, a policy brief or op-ed, and a research paper.
Pre-requisite: Background knowledge on climate change, environmental policy, or economics is recommended (e.g., courses such as ENST 226, 230, 252, 260, 330, 342 or POSC 112, 231, 307). Instructor permission required for students who have not taken ENST 120. Limited to 20 students. Fall 2022. Professor Ravikumar.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Fall 2022
301 Hydrogeology
(Offered as GEOL 301 and ENST 301) As the global human population expands in a future marked by climate change, the search for and preservation of our most vital resource, water, will demand thoughtful policy and greater scientific understanding. This course is an introduction to surface and groundwater hydrology, geochemistry, and management for natural systems and human needs. Lectures will focus on understanding the hydrologic cycle, how water flows over and within the earth, and the many ways in which this water is threatened by contamination and overuse. Three hours of lecture and three hours of lab each week. The laboratory will be centered around on-going local issues concerning use and restoration of the Fort River watershed.
Requisite: GEOL 109 or 111 or consent of the instructor. Fall semester. Professor Martini.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Spring 2012, Spring 2013, Spring 2015, Fall 2016, Fall 2018, Spring 2021, Spring 2022, Fall 2022
306 Pandemics and Society: The Socio-Ecological Construction of Infectious Diseases throughout History
(Offered as SOCI-306 and ENST-306) How and why do pandemics emerge? How have pandemics been shaped by social and ecological conditions around the world? And how do pandemics in turn transform society and our environment? This is a research-oriented interdisciplinary seminar examining how epidemic infectious diseases are not naturally given but socially and environmentally constructed. We will study the plague (including the Black Death), smallpox, dengue, malaria, cholera, tuberculosis, influenza, HIV, SARS, MERS, and COVID-19, and draw upon examples from all around the world throughout history. Special attention is given to environmental change and modernization, science and technology, state-making and globalization, migration and geopolitics, as well as class, race/ethnicity and gender inequalities. The seminar will draw on readings in sociology, anthropology, history, geography, public health, biology, epidemiology, political ecology, and other interdisciplinary fields. Lectures will be accompanied by discussion, and students will be required to undertake independent research, write a final essay, and present their work to the class. We will explore the possibility of publishing final essays as a collection.
Limited to 20 students. Spring semester. Professor Zhang.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Spring 2024
310 Ecosystem Ecology
This course examines the principles of ecosystem ecology, which facilitates our understanding of key environmental issues. We will focus on water and elemental cycling and energy flow in terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. Topics will include the Earth’s climate system, carbon cycling, nutrient cycling, disturbance regimes, succession, and ecosystem resilience. We will discuss how ecosystem structure and function relates to applied issues of conservation, sustainability, and responses to climate change.
Requisites: ENST-210 or consent of instructor. Spring 2023. Professor Hewitt.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023
314 Climate Justice Now
(Offered as ENST-314 and SOCI-314) A 2020 survey of nearly 21,000 adults in 28 countries conducted by the World Economic Forum and Ipsos found that 86% of people want to see a more equitable and sustainable world after the pandemic. Action on climate change is central to these goals. But what kind of action do we take? What are the targets of effective climate action? How can each of us contribute to the larger-scale changes needed to address global warming and work toward climate justice now? The goal of this course is to answer these questions by taking as our point of departure the 2022 report of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which provides the most comprehensive overview available of the international social science of climate change mitigation. This report shows real possibilities for keeping global temperatures below the more dangerous thresholds expected with “business as usual” if we take more urgent action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) across sectors. The report highlights that “collective action and social organising are crucial to shift the possibility space of public policy on climate change mitigation” and that explicit consideration of the principles of justice, equality, and fairness enables the acceleration of the transition to sustainability. Therefore, we focus on the evidence regarding how our actions to address climate change can improve lives and contribute to the just and fair society most of us want by transforming critical sectors, including, for example, transportation, electricity, and land use. This course involves experiential learning.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Fall 2023, Spring 2024
328 The Pandemic
(Offered as SOCI 328 and ENST 328) This course examines the root social and ecological conditions that gave rise to the COVID-19 pandemic and that help explain the significant inequalities we observe in terms of its impact. We study the structure and historical development of the global economy and the state, class and racial formation, the gendered division of society, and global ecological challenges, all of which provide necessary background to understand the pandemic’s emergence, effects, and the range of social response, including state policy. These studies include attention to the persistent consequences of colonialism, settler colonialism, and racial capitalism. We also study the contested nature of these developments, such as how movements and struggles over political power, economic development, racial justice, ecological protection, and public health, shape outcomes.
This course will be conducted in a hybrid format, with more of the course online and in-person meetings included as possible. Options for online-only participation will be available for those students unable to participate in person.
Limited to 15 students. Omitted 2021-22. Professors Holleman and Lembo.
2022-23: Not offeredOther years: Offered in Spring 2021
341 Ecology, Justice, and the Struggle for Socio-Ecological Change: Environmental Movements and Ideas
(Offered as SOCI 341 and ENST 341) Social movements—from the early conservation and anti-colonial movements that began over a century ago, to the modern climate justice movement—have worked to make environmental issues and inequalities part of the global political and policy agenda. The course draws upon sociological research that fosters an understanding of contemporary environmental debates, as well as the possibilities and obstacles we face in attempting to address socio-ecological problems. We study diverse global environmental movements and proposed environmental solutions, which reflect a wide range of perspectives and interests, as well as social inequalities. Inequality within and between countries means that different issues are at stake in negotiations addressing ecological problems for communities and people of different social locations. Race, ethnicity, class, gender, and position in the global economy affect both the way we experience socio-ecological change, and the ways we imagine and attempt to solve contemporary problems. Therefore, issues of environmental justice are highlighted as we study the history and achievements of environmental movements internationally, as well as enduring challenges and controversies. The syllabus is designed to benefit both the most seasoned environmentalists and students of the history of environmentalism, as well as participants for whom the course topics are new.
Limited to 20 students. Omitted 2021-22. Professor Holleman.
2022-23: Not offeredOther years: Offered in Spring 2013, Spring 2014, Fall 2014, Spring 2017, Spring 2018
342 Socio-Ecological Victories and Visions
(Offered as SOCI 342 and ENST 342) If you learn about the major trends shaping human societies and the rest of the planet in our era, you might ask these questions: How do we reduce the vast inequalities threatening democracy and undermining the self-determination of peoples around the world? How do we address global-scale crises like climate change, the pollution of the earth’s lands and waters, and anthropogenic extinction of species? How do we heal social divisions to build movements based on solidarity and reparation that transcend a “single-issue” focus while emphasizing the distinct needs of diverse communities? Can we imagine a society geared toward meeting culturally-determined human needs and deepening human happiness, while at the same time restoring the earth systems on which we depend? How do we engage such daunting issues with strength and, at times, joy?
These are massive questions now asked by scholars, scientists, activists, and communities around the world. This course explores answers to these questions through in-depth sociological analyses of critical victories and visions toward ecological and social change emerging internationally in the past decade. Such case studies represent hopeful challenges to the xenophobic, racist, anti-ecological, homophobic, misogynistic, winner-takes-all politics threatening much of life on earth.
Students must have at least one course in either SOCI or ANTH, or ENST 120, or other courses addressing the trends that are central to this course.
Limited to 18 students. Admission with consent of the instructor. Omitted 2021-22. Professor Holleman.
2022-23: Not offeredOther years: Offered in Spring 2019
374, 474 Population Ethics
(Offered as ENST 474 and PHIL 374) Is our planet overpopulated? And if so, how many of us should live on it? Population raises tricky questions that are both empirical and broadly philosophical: How should we weigh the well-being of future individuals against the lives of those currently living? Should we aim for a future population whose average or whose total level of well-being is maximized—or should we apply some other standard? Even more fundamentally: are we right to think of human life as, on balance, a positive thing? And how might a policy based on answers to such questions be weighed against rights to reproductive choice, and against considerations of justice? In this seminar, we will explore recent work in the emerging and fascinating field of population ethics. We will chart new areas for research, as well as for practical policy-making.
Requisite: At least one course in either ENST or PHIL. Limited to 15 students. Spring semester. Professor Moore.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023402 Wine, History and the Environment
(Offered as HIST 402 [TC/TE/C] and ENST 402.) Wine is as old as civilization, and is deeply wedded to religious and secular traditions around the world. Its production has transformed landscapes, ecosystems, and economies. In this course we examine how wine has shaped the history of Europe, North Africa, the Americas, and, increasingly, China. Through historical readings, scientific study, art, and class discussion, students will learn about such issues as the environmental impact of wine; the politics of taste and class; the organization of labor; the impact of imperialism and global trade; the late nineteenth-century phylloxera outbreak that almost destroyed the European wine industry; and the emergence of claims about terroir (the notion that each wine, like each culture, is uniquely tied to a place) and how such claims are anchored to regional and national identity. We will get our hands dirty with soil sampling, learn the basics of sediment analysis in the laboratory, and have a go at fermentation. Required field trips might include the taking of soil samples and planting of vines at Book and Plow Farm and a visit to a nearby winery. There also might be an optional multi-day oenology trip to New York’s Finger Lake district. Students who are using the course as their research seminar for History or LLAS will have one extra workshop each week to focus on the design and execution of an independent research project.
Limited to 20 students. This is a research seminar open to juniors and seniors. Spring semester. Professor López and Professor Martini.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Fall 2011, Fall 2012, Spring 2013, Spring 2014
430 Seminar on Fisheries
The dependency of many countries on marine organisms for food has resulted in severe population declines in cod, bluefin tuna, swordfish, and abalone, as well as numerous other marine organisms. In this seminar we will examine the sociological, political, and economic impacts of global depletion of fisheries. Questions addressed will be: What is the scope of extinctions or potential extinctions due to over-harvesting of marine organisms? How are fisheries managed, and are some approaches to harvesting better than others? How do fisheries extinctions affect the society and economy of various countries, and ecosystem stability? How do cultural traditions of fishermen influence attempts to manage fisheries? Does aquaculture offer a sustainable alternative to overfishing the seas, and what is aquaculture’s impact on ecosystem stability? Three class hours per week.
Requisite: ENST 120 or BIOL 230/ENST 210. Limited to 15 students. Spring semester. Professor Temeles.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Spring 2013, Spring 2021, Spring 2024
440, 441 Seminar in Conservation Biology
(Offered as BIOL 440 and ENST 441) Conservation biology is a highly interdisciplinary field, requiring careful consideration of biological, economic, and sociological issues. Solutions to biodiversity conservation and environmental challenges are even more complex. Yet, conservation is a topic of timely importance in order to safeguard biological diversity. Utilizing close reading and discussion of articles from the primary literature, the course will explore key topics including overexploitation (including connections between the wildlife trade and emergent diseases such as COVID-19), habitat fragmentation, climate change, restoration, protected areas, payments for ecosystem services, as well as how to determine appropriate conservation priorities. Three classroom hours per week.
Requisite: BIOL 230/ENST 210 or BIOL 320, or consent of the instructor. Not open to first-year students. Limited to 14 students. Spring Semester. Senior Lecturer Levin.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Spring 2012, Fall 2013, Fall 2015, Fall 2016, Spring 2018, Fall 2019, Fall 2020, Spring 2022
490 Special Topics
Independent reading course.
Fall and spring semesters. The Department.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022, Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Fall 2011, Spring 2012, Fall 2012, Spring 2013, Fall 2013, Spring 2014, Fall 2014, Spring 2015, Fall 2015, Spring 2016, Fall 2016, Spring 2017, Fall 2017, Spring 2018, Fall 2018, Spring 2019, Fall 2019, Spring 2020, Fall 2020, Spring 2021, Fall 2021, Spring 2022, Fall 2022
495 Senior Seminar
The Senior Seminar is the capstone course in the environmental studies major, which serves as the comprehensive requirement, and is taken by all seniors in the fall of their senior year. The diversity of student interests is one of the strengths of the environmental studies department at Amherst and the senior seminar captures this diversity by asking students to explore their own interests through substantial, original research on an environmental topic. The capstone is designed to be flexible to accommodate diverse interests and cultivate different skills, including finding and making sense of material from a variety of sources, articulating effective arguments, and gaining fluency in the communication of ideas.
Open to seniors. Fall semester. Professor Sims.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Fall 2022, Fall 2023
498, 499D Senior Honors
Fall semester. The Department.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Fall 2011, Fall 2012, Fall 2013, Fall 2014, Fall 2015, Fall 2016, Fall 2017, Fall 2018, Fall 2019, Fall 2020, January 2021, Fall 2021, January 2022, Spring 2022, Fall 2022, Fall 2023
499 Senior Departmental Honors
Spring semester. The Department.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Spring 2012, Spring 2013, Spring 2014, Spring 2015, Spring 2016, Spring 2017, Spring 2018, Spring 2019, Spring 2020, Spring 2021, Spring 2022, Spring 2024
Related Courses
Honors & Fellowships
Honors & Fellowships
BackEnvironmental Studies
Professors Clotfelter‡, López, Martini, Melillo (Chair), Miller†, Moore, Sims and Temeles; Associate Professor Holleman; Assistant Professors Hewitt, Ravikumar and Zhang; Senior Lecturer Levin†.
For many thousands of years, our ancestors were more shaped by the environment, than they were shapers of it. This began to change, first with hunting and then, roughly ten thousand years ago, with the beginnings of agriculture. Since then, humans have had a steadily increasing impact on the natural world. Environmental Studies explores the complex interactions between humans and their environment. This exploration requires grounding in the natural sciences, the humanities, and the social sciences.
Majors in Environmental Studies take a minimum of eleven courses that collectively reflect the subject’s interdisciplinary nature. The required introductory courses (ENST-110 and ENST-120) and senior seminar (ENST-495) are taught by faculty from the natural sciences, the social sciences, and humanities. The core courses include Ecology (ENST-210), Environmental History (ENST-105, ENST-220 or ENST-265), Economics (ENST-230 or ECON-111), Statistics/Research Methods (many course options), Environmental Policy (ENST-250 or ENST-260), and Environmental Justice (ENST-265 or ENST-330). Beyond these courses, majors must take two electives, including at least one course from each of two categories (Category I: Natural sciences and Category II: Social sciences and Humanities), which span different fields of environmental inquiry.
Majors are strongly encouraged to complete the introductory course by the end of their second year and the core requirements prior to their senior year. The senior seminar (ENST-495) offered in the fall semester, fulfills the comprehensive requirement.
The honors program in Environmental Studies involves two course credits. Majors electing to complete honors are required to submit a thesis proposal to the Department either in the spring of the junior year (if summer work is required) or at the beginning of the first semester of the senior year. Accepted candidates can take either an honors course in two successive semesters (ENST-498 & ENST-499) or take a double-credit course in the spring semester (ENST-499D).
Students who wish to satisfy a requirement with a Five College course or a course taken away from Amherst College must petition the Department in writing through the Chair and submit a syllabus or description of the course for approval. Students for whom Environmental Studies is a second major can count no more than two courses toward both majors.
* On leave 2022-23†On leave fall semester 2022-23‡On leave spring semester 2022-23
104, 220 Environmental Issues of the 19th Century
(Offered as HIST 104 [TR/c] and ENST 220) This course considers the ways that people in various parts of the world thought about and acted upon nature during the nineteenth century. We look historically at issues that continue to have relevance today, including: invasive species, deforestation, soil-nitrogen availability, water use, desertification, and air pollution. Themes include: the relationship of nineteenth-century colonialism and environmental degradation, gender and environmental change, the racial dimensions of ecological issues, and the spatial aspects of human interactions with nature. We will take at least one field trip. In addition, we will watch three films that approach nineteenth-century environmental issues from different vantage points. Two class meetings per week.
Limited to 18 students. Spring semester. Professor Melillo.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Spring 2012, Spring 2014, Spring 2015, Fall 2018, Spring 2020, Spring 2021
110 Environmental Science with laboratory
This course provides an introduction to environmental science. Students will gain an understanding of the function and interactions between the biological, chemical, and physical components of the biosphere and take a systems approach to addressing environmental issues. Lectures on the Earth’s physical and ecological systems, resource use and management, and pollution and toxicology will link central scientific concepts to case studies of regional, national, and global environmental concern. The laboratory will expose students to various tools, techniques, and methodologies used to study the natural environment and document problems. Through field studies and the analysis of data and scientific literature, we will explore air, water, soil, and vegetation processes and their connection to local and global environmental issues. Students will identify research questions, test hypotheses, develop sampling and analysis plans, execute various field and lab methods, and report scientific findings.
Limited to 16 students. Fall 2022. Professor Hewitt.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Fall 2022, Fall 2023
111E, 230 An Introduction to Economics with Environmental Applications
(Offered as ECON 111E and ENST 230) An introduction to the core theories and measures of markets and the current economic system. We study both microeconomics, which addresses the central problem of resource scarcity and how markets for individual goods and services function, and macroeconomics, which addresses the economy as a whole and key aggregate measures such as unemployment and inflation. Econ 111E covers the same material as ECON 111 but with special attention to the relationship between economic activity and environmental problems, including market failures, and to the application of economic tools to analyze environmental issues. A student may not receive credit for both ECON 111 and ECON 111E. Two 80-minute and one 50-minute lecture/discussions per week.
Admission with consent of the instructor. Limited to 25 Amherst College students. Spring semester. Professor Sims.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Fall 2012, Fall 2013, Fall 2014, Fall 2015, Fall 2016, Fall 2018, Spring 2020, Fall 2021, Spring 2022, Fall 2023
120 The Resilient (?) Earth: An Introduction to Environmental Studies
What is ‘the environment’ and why does it matter? What are the environmental impacts of “business as usual”? What kinds of environmental futures do we want to work towards and what are the alternatives? In this course, we will explore these and other questions that examine how and why we relate to the environment in the ways that we do and the social, ecological and ethical implications of these relationships. As an Introduction to Environmental Studies, this course seeks to (i) develop a common framework for understanding ‘the environment’ as a tightly coupled socio-natural enterprise, and (ii) familiarize students with several key environmental issues of the 21st century. One lecture and one discussion section per week.
Limited to 50 students. Spring semester. Senior Lecturer R. Levin and Professor Holleman.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Spring 2012, Spring 2013, Spring 2014, Spring 2015, Spring 2016, Spring 2017, Spring 2018, Spring 2019, Spring 2020, Spring 2021, Spring 2022, Spring 2024
207 The Wild and the Cultivated
(Offered as HIST 207 [TR/C] and ENST 207) For thousands of years, wild and domesticated plants have played crucial roles in the development of cultures and societies. Students in this course will consider human relationships with plants from a global-historical perspective, comparing trends in various regions and time periods. We will focus on the Neolithic Agricultural Revolution, seed-saving practices, medicinal plants, religious rites, food traditions, biopiracy, agribusiness, and biofuels. Two class meetings per week.
Limited to 30 students. Fall semester. Professor Melillo.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Spring 2019, Fall 2022
210, 230 Ecology
(Offered as BIOL 230 and ENST 210) A study of the relationships of plants and animals (including humans) to each other and to their environment. We'll start by considering the decisions an individual makes in its daily life concerning its use of resources, such as what to eat and where to live, and whether to defend such resources. We'll then move on to populations of individuals, and investigate species population growth, limits to population growth, and why some species are so successful as to become pests whereas others are on the road to extinction. The next level will address communities, and how interactions among populations, such as competition, predation, parasitism, and mutualism, affect the organization and diversity of species within communities. The final stage of the course will focus on ecosystems, and the effects of humans and other organisms on population, community, and global stability. Three hours of lecture per week.
Requisite: BIOL 181 or ENST 110 or equivalent. Limited to 40 students. Spring Semester. Professor Temeles.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Spring 2012, Fall 2012, Fall 2013, Fall 2014, Fall 2015, Fall 2016, Fall 2017, Fall 2018, Spring 2019, Spring 2020, Fall 2020, Fall 2021, Spring 2024
225 Climate Change: Science and Society
Understanding the connections between climate science and the societal impacts of climate change is key to addressing the global climate crisis. This course will critically examine climate change drivers, impacts, and solutions from the scientific and societal perspectives. Through lecture, discussion, and project work we will examine environmental responses to climate change, communication within the scientific community and by stakeholders, and adaptation and mitigation response strategies. Our examination of the science will be grounded by careful analysis of documents such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and will empower students to translate their understanding of the science into meaningful communication strategies designed to mitigate the effects of climate change. This course will emphasize verbal, written, and visual communication skills pertaining to climate change science.
Requisites: ENST-120, BIOL-181, GEOL-109, or consent of instructor. Limited to 18 students. Omit Spring 2023. Assistant Professor Hewitt.
2022-23: Not offeredOther years: Offered in Spring 2024
226 Unequal Footprints on the Earth: Understanding the Social Drivers of Ecological Crises and Environmental Inequality
(Offered as SOCI 226 and ENST 226) Creating a more sustainable relationship between human society and the rest of nature requires changing the way we relate to one another as humans. This course will explain why, while answering a number of associated questions and introducing the exciting and engaged field of environmental sociology. We study the anthropogenic drivers of environmental change from an interdisciplinary and historical perspective to make sense of pressing socio-ecological issues, including climate change, sustainability and justice in global food production, the disproportionate location of toxic waste disposal in communities of color, biodiversity loss, desertification, freshwater pollution and unequal access, the accumulation and trade in electronic waste, the ecological footprint of the Internet, and more. We examine how these issues are linked to broad inequalities within society, which are reflected in, and exacerbated by, persistent problems with environmental racism, the unaddressed legacies of colonialism, and other contributors to environmental injustice worldwide. Industrialization and the expansionary tendencies of the modern economic system receive particular attention, as these continue to be central factors promoting ecological change. Throughout the course a hopeful perspective in the face of such interrelated challenges is encouraged as we study promising efforts and movements that emphasize both ecological restoration and achievement of a more just, democratic world.
Course readings include foundational texts in environmental sociology, as well as the most current research on course topics. Writing and research assignments allow for the development of in-depth analyses of social and environmental issues relevant to students' community, everyday life, personal experience, and concerns.
Limited to 18 students. Fall semester. Professor Holleman.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Fall 2012, Fall 2013, Spring 2015, Fall 2016, Fall 2017, Fall 2018, Fall 2020, Fall 2021, Fall 2022
250 US Environmental Policy
This course is built around core readings on key policies and agencies of environmental governance in the US. It will provide students with a strong grasp of the most important environmental legislation in the United States (such as the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Clean Air Act). We will explore how existing environmental laws and institutions have provided important environmental protections, and also where they have fallen short. We will also ask how environmental racism and other forms of inequality have been addressed or exacerbated by historical policies, with an eye towards identifying promising alternatives in the future. Students will examine the relationships between local, state, and federal agencies carrying out environmental governance. This class will explore how policy is "political," and how it emerges from the actions of competing interest groups.
Pre-requisite: ENST-120. Fall 2022. Professor Ravikumar.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Fall 2022, Fall 2023
260 Global Environmental Politics
The effects of environmental problems, from climate change, to water contamination, to the depletion of fisheries, are felt acutely at the local level. But their underlying causes are often global: coal-burning power plants in China affects sea-level rise near Miami, overfishing by European fleets off the coast of Africa affects bush meat hunting in the Congo Basin, and deforestation in Indonesia creates forest fires that affect all of Southeast Asia’s air quality. Environmental issues are also fundamentally political: that is, they emerge through negotiations between different actors and groups with divergent interests and disparate degrees of power and influence. In this course, we will examine how environmental problems emerge through political processes that transcend national borders. Through foundational readings, in-depth classroom discussions, and team-based analysis of pressing contemporary cases, you will learn the tools of rigorous multi-level political and policy analysis. While we will emphasize that a global and explicitly political analysis is necessary to properly diagnose why environmental problems and conflicts emerge, we will focus on how these diagnoses suggest solutions. Coming out of this course, you will be better equipped to analyze how global politics are linked to local environmental issues, and to understand when different types of solutions – from small changes to policy, to international treaties, to protest and demands for radical systems change – are most likely to move the needle on environmental sustainability and justice.
Requisite: ENST 120. Limited to 35 students. Spring 2023. Professor Ravikumar.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Spring 2024
270 Food and the Environment: Towards Global Health, Justice, and Sustainable Development
(Offered as ENST-270 and SOCI-270) Food and farming make fundamental connections between humans and the earth. This course examines how agriculture, food systems, and rural development are entangled with environmental and social transformations around the world, and how we can cultivate solutions for global health, sustainability and social justice. Topics examined range from technological modernization and biotechnology to agroecology and food culture, malnutrition and obesity, food safety and environmental intoxication, land and labor struggles, race and gender issues in food systems, and from climate change to sustainable development. Readings draw from development studies and sociology, critical food and agrarian studies, political ecology and other interdisciplinary environmental studies. In addition to the lectures, students will cultivate critical thinking and improve skills in reading, writing, discussion, and creativity through dialogue, hands-on activities at the Book & Plow farm, creative exercises, and independent research.
Spring semester. Associate Professor Zhang.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Spring 2022, Fall 2023, Spring 2024
300 The Green New Deal
The Green New Deal has gained traction in the United States and around the world as a new approach to environmental policy and to redress structural inequalities linked to income and race. What is the Green New Deal, and how does it seem to transform environmental governance? In this course, we will explore key readings on the Green New Deal, and explore its connection to the original New Deal. We will examine how it relates to relevant literatures, such as environmental economics, political economy, critical race theory, and environmental sociology. We will critically debate the merits of various proposals for the Green New Deal using these frameworks and explore what it might take to translate these proposals into effective legislation. This class will equip students to contribute to a national conversation around these questions. Students will write weekly reflections, a policy brief or op-ed, and a research paper.
Pre-requisite: Background knowledge on climate change, environmental policy, or economics is recommended (e.g., courses such as ENST 226, 230, 252, 260, 330, 342 or POSC 112, 231, 307). Instructor permission required for students who have not taken ENST 120. Limited to 20 students. Fall 2022. Professor Ravikumar.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Fall 2022
301 Hydrogeology
(Offered as GEOL 301 and ENST 301) As the global human population expands in a future marked by climate change, the search for and preservation of our most vital resource, water, will demand thoughtful policy and greater scientific understanding. This course is an introduction to surface and groundwater hydrology, geochemistry, and management for natural systems and human needs. Lectures will focus on understanding the hydrologic cycle, how water flows over and within the earth, and the many ways in which this water is threatened by contamination and overuse. Three hours of lecture and three hours of lab each week. The laboratory will be centered around on-going local issues concerning use and restoration of the Fort River watershed.
Requisite: GEOL 109 or 111 or consent of the instructor. Fall semester. Professor Martini.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Spring 2012, Spring 2013, Spring 2015, Fall 2016, Fall 2018, Spring 2021, Spring 2022, Fall 2022
306 Pandemics and Society: The Socio-Ecological Construction of Infectious Diseases throughout History
(Offered as SOCI-306 and ENST-306) How and why do pandemics emerge? How have pandemics been shaped by social and ecological conditions around the world? And how do pandemics in turn transform society and our environment? This is a research-oriented interdisciplinary seminar examining how epidemic infectious diseases are not naturally given but socially and environmentally constructed. We will study the plague (including the Black Death), smallpox, dengue, malaria, cholera, tuberculosis, influenza, HIV, SARS, MERS, and COVID-19, and draw upon examples from all around the world throughout history. Special attention is given to environmental change and modernization, science and technology, state-making and globalization, migration and geopolitics, as well as class, race/ethnicity and gender inequalities. The seminar will draw on readings in sociology, anthropology, history, geography, public health, biology, epidemiology, political ecology, and other interdisciplinary fields. Lectures will be accompanied by discussion, and students will be required to undertake independent research, write a final essay, and present their work to the class. We will explore the possibility of publishing final essays as a collection.
Limited to 20 students. Spring semester. Professor Zhang.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Spring 2024
310 Ecosystem Ecology
This course examines the principles of ecosystem ecology, which facilitates our understanding of key environmental issues. We will focus on water and elemental cycling and energy flow in terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. Topics will include the Earth’s climate system, carbon cycling, nutrient cycling, disturbance regimes, succession, and ecosystem resilience. We will discuss how ecosystem structure and function relates to applied issues of conservation, sustainability, and responses to climate change.
Requisites: ENST-210 or consent of instructor. Spring 2023. Professor Hewitt.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023
314 Climate Justice Now
(Offered as ENST-314 and SOCI-314) A 2020 survey of nearly 21,000 adults in 28 countries conducted by the World Economic Forum and Ipsos found that 86% of people want to see a more equitable and sustainable world after the pandemic. Action on climate change is central to these goals. But what kind of action do we take? What are the targets of effective climate action? How can each of us contribute to the larger-scale changes needed to address global warming and work toward climate justice now? The goal of this course is to answer these questions by taking as our point of departure the 2022 report of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which provides the most comprehensive overview available of the international social science of climate change mitigation. This report shows real possibilities for keeping global temperatures below the more dangerous thresholds expected with “business as usual” if we take more urgent action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) across sectors. The report highlights that “collective action and social organising are crucial to shift the possibility space of public policy on climate change mitigation” and that explicit consideration of the principles of justice, equality, and fairness enables the acceleration of the transition to sustainability. Therefore, we focus on the evidence regarding how our actions to address climate change can improve lives and contribute to the just and fair society most of us want by transforming critical sectors, including, for example, transportation, electricity, and land use. This course involves experiential learning.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Fall 2023, Spring 2024
328 The Pandemic
(Offered as SOCI 328 and ENST 328) This course examines the root social and ecological conditions that gave rise to the COVID-19 pandemic and that help explain the significant inequalities we observe in terms of its impact. We study the structure and historical development of the global economy and the state, class and racial formation, the gendered division of society, and global ecological challenges, all of which provide necessary background to understand the pandemic’s emergence, effects, and the range of social response, including state policy. These studies include attention to the persistent consequences of colonialism, settler colonialism, and racial capitalism. We also study the contested nature of these developments, such as how movements and struggles over political power, economic development, racial justice, ecological protection, and public health, shape outcomes.
This course will be conducted in a hybrid format, with more of the course online and in-person meetings included as possible. Options for online-only participation will be available for those students unable to participate in person.
Limited to 15 students. Omitted 2021-22. Professors Holleman and Lembo.
2022-23: Not offeredOther years: Offered in Spring 2021
341 Ecology, Justice, and the Struggle for Socio-Ecological Change: Environmental Movements and Ideas
(Offered as SOCI 341 and ENST 341) Social movements—from the early conservation and anti-colonial movements that began over a century ago, to the modern climate justice movement—have worked to make environmental issues and inequalities part of the global political and policy agenda. The course draws upon sociological research that fosters an understanding of contemporary environmental debates, as well as the possibilities and obstacles we face in attempting to address socio-ecological problems. We study diverse global environmental movements and proposed environmental solutions, which reflect a wide range of perspectives and interests, as well as social inequalities. Inequality within and between countries means that different issues are at stake in negotiations addressing ecological problems for communities and people of different social locations. Race, ethnicity, class, gender, and position in the global economy affect both the way we experience socio-ecological change, and the ways we imagine and attempt to solve contemporary problems. Therefore, issues of environmental justice are highlighted as we study the history and achievements of environmental movements internationally, as well as enduring challenges and controversies. The syllabus is designed to benefit both the most seasoned environmentalists and students of the history of environmentalism, as well as participants for whom the course topics are new.
Limited to 20 students. Omitted 2021-22. Professor Holleman.
2022-23: Not offeredOther years: Offered in Spring 2013, Spring 2014, Fall 2014, Spring 2017, Spring 2018
342 Socio-Ecological Victories and Visions
(Offered as SOCI 342 and ENST 342) If you learn about the major trends shaping human societies and the rest of the planet in our era, you might ask these questions: How do we reduce the vast inequalities threatening democracy and undermining the self-determination of peoples around the world? How do we address global-scale crises like climate change, the pollution of the earth’s lands and waters, and anthropogenic extinction of species? How do we heal social divisions to build movements based on solidarity and reparation that transcend a “single-issue” focus while emphasizing the distinct needs of diverse communities? Can we imagine a society geared toward meeting culturally-determined human needs and deepening human happiness, while at the same time restoring the earth systems on which we depend? How do we engage such daunting issues with strength and, at times, joy?
These are massive questions now asked by scholars, scientists, activists, and communities around the world. This course explores answers to these questions through in-depth sociological analyses of critical victories and visions toward ecological and social change emerging internationally in the past decade. Such case studies represent hopeful challenges to the xenophobic, racist, anti-ecological, homophobic, misogynistic, winner-takes-all politics threatening much of life on earth.
Students must have at least one course in either SOCI or ANTH, or ENST 120, or other courses addressing the trends that are central to this course.
Limited to 18 students. Admission with consent of the instructor. Omitted 2021-22. Professor Holleman.
2022-23: Not offeredOther years: Offered in Spring 2019
374, 474 Population Ethics
(Offered as ENST 474 and PHIL 374) Is our planet overpopulated? And if so, how many of us should live on it? Population raises tricky questions that are both empirical and broadly philosophical: How should we weigh the well-being of future individuals against the lives of those currently living? Should we aim for a future population whose average or whose total level of well-being is maximized—or should we apply some other standard? Even more fundamentally: are we right to think of human life as, on balance, a positive thing? And how might a policy based on answers to such questions be weighed against rights to reproductive choice, and against considerations of justice? In this seminar, we will explore recent work in the emerging and fascinating field of population ethics. We will chart new areas for research, as well as for practical policy-making.
Requisite: At least one course in either ENST or PHIL. Limited to 15 students. Spring semester. Professor Moore.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023402 Wine, History and the Environment
(Offered as HIST 402 [TC/TE/C] and ENST 402.) Wine is as old as civilization, and is deeply wedded to religious and secular traditions around the world. Its production has transformed landscapes, ecosystems, and economies. In this course we examine how wine has shaped the history of Europe, North Africa, the Americas, and, increasingly, China. Through historical readings, scientific study, art, and class discussion, students will learn about such issues as the environmental impact of wine; the politics of taste and class; the organization of labor; the impact of imperialism and global trade; the late nineteenth-century phylloxera outbreak that almost destroyed the European wine industry; and the emergence of claims about terroir (the notion that each wine, like each culture, is uniquely tied to a place) and how such claims are anchored to regional and national identity. We will get our hands dirty with soil sampling, learn the basics of sediment analysis in the laboratory, and have a go at fermentation. Required field trips might include the taking of soil samples and planting of vines at Book and Plow Farm and a visit to a nearby winery. There also might be an optional multi-day oenology trip to New York’s Finger Lake district. Students who are using the course as their research seminar for History or LLAS will have one extra workshop each week to focus on the design and execution of an independent research project.
Limited to 20 students. This is a research seminar open to juniors and seniors. Spring semester. Professor López and Professor Martini.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Fall 2011, Fall 2012, Spring 2013, Spring 2014
430 Seminar on Fisheries
The dependency of many countries on marine organisms for food has resulted in severe population declines in cod, bluefin tuna, swordfish, and abalone, as well as numerous other marine organisms. In this seminar we will examine the sociological, political, and economic impacts of global depletion of fisheries. Questions addressed will be: What is the scope of extinctions or potential extinctions due to over-harvesting of marine organisms? How are fisheries managed, and are some approaches to harvesting better than others? How do fisheries extinctions affect the society and economy of various countries, and ecosystem stability? How do cultural traditions of fishermen influence attempts to manage fisheries? Does aquaculture offer a sustainable alternative to overfishing the seas, and what is aquaculture’s impact on ecosystem stability? Three class hours per week.
Requisite: ENST 120 or BIOL 230/ENST 210. Limited to 15 students. Spring semester. Professor Temeles.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Spring 2013, Spring 2021, Spring 2024
440, 441 Seminar in Conservation Biology
(Offered as BIOL 440 and ENST 441) Conservation biology is a highly interdisciplinary field, requiring careful consideration of biological, economic, and sociological issues. Solutions to biodiversity conservation and environmental challenges are even more complex. Yet, conservation is a topic of timely importance in order to safeguard biological diversity. Utilizing close reading and discussion of articles from the primary literature, the course will explore key topics including overexploitation (including connections between the wildlife trade and emergent diseases such as COVID-19), habitat fragmentation, climate change, restoration, protected areas, payments for ecosystem services, as well as how to determine appropriate conservation priorities. Three classroom hours per week.
Requisite: BIOL 230/ENST 210 or BIOL 320, or consent of the instructor. Not open to first-year students. Limited to 14 students. Spring Semester. Senior Lecturer Levin.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Spring 2012, Fall 2013, Fall 2015, Fall 2016, Spring 2018, Fall 2019, Fall 2020, Spring 2022
490 Special Topics
Independent reading course.
Fall and spring semesters. The Department.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022, Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Fall 2011, Spring 2012, Fall 2012, Spring 2013, Fall 2013, Spring 2014, Fall 2014, Spring 2015, Fall 2015, Spring 2016, Fall 2016, Spring 2017, Fall 2017, Spring 2018, Fall 2018, Spring 2019, Fall 2019, Spring 2020, Fall 2020, Spring 2021, Fall 2021, Spring 2022, Fall 2022
495 Senior Seminar
The Senior Seminar is the capstone course in the environmental studies major, which serves as the comprehensive requirement, and is taken by all seniors in the fall of their senior year. The diversity of student interests is one of the strengths of the environmental studies department at Amherst and the senior seminar captures this diversity by asking students to explore their own interests through substantial, original research on an environmental topic. The capstone is designed to be flexible to accommodate diverse interests and cultivate different skills, including finding and making sense of material from a variety of sources, articulating effective arguments, and gaining fluency in the communication of ideas.
Open to seniors. Fall semester. Professor Sims.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Fall 2022, Fall 2023
498, 499D Senior Honors
Fall semester. The Department.
2022-23: Offered in Fall 2022Other years: Offered in Fall 2011, Fall 2012, Fall 2013, Fall 2014, Fall 2015, Fall 2016, Fall 2017, Fall 2018, Fall 2019, Fall 2020, January 2021, Fall 2021, January 2022, Spring 2022, Fall 2022, Fall 2023
499 Senior Departmental Honors
Spring semester. The Department.
2022-23: Offered in Spring 2023Other years: Offered in Spring 2012, Spring 2013, Spring 2014, Spring 2015, Spring 2016, Spring 2017, Spring 2018, Spring 2019, Spring 2020, Spring 2021, Spring 2022, Spring 2024