Jody Cohen (BMC - Education) and Anne Dalke (BMC – English)

Muddy-ing the Waters:

Doing Justice to Race, Class, Gender and Environment

http://www.otheragents.net/descendingstairs/DescendingStairs.html?theKeyword=Harriet%20Tubman&Flights=6&Stairs=12&xInc=50&yInc=40&name=

Anne and Jody learned of Harriet Tubman’s environmentalism when Dr. Dorceta Taylor from the University of Michigan visited Bryn Mawr this past February. Dr. Taylor identified Tubman as an environmentalist for the importance of her being able to “read” nature in her work as an abolitionist. Weather, bird calls, river currents, moss on trees, medicinal use of plants, time of night, star navigation – were critical tools for her work. She could read the world and use the readings to find justice for people enslaved. In this Emily Balch seminar course there will be a mixing of identity politics and environmental concerns – race, class, gender and environment – for freshman. They hope to help them expand their reading of the world and use of words to do that. Muddying the waters – what they don't know and what we don't know we don't know. Big questions of time and place will be addressed.

Questions they raised included: • How can we re-read Harriet Tubman as an environmentalist? How can we help students

understand what constitutes an environmental issue?• How can social scientists figure out how to enter the environmental field?• How are we taking Eco-literacy forward – right now – we can’t keep it to ourselves.

Benjamin Le (HC - Psychology)

The Psychology of Conservation: Theory and Research in Environmentalism

• Professor Le’s interest is in the relationship commitment. He sees this model as a useful way to look at our commitment to the environment. Some of the questions that he and his students will be looking at include:

• How is environmentalism connected to cognition and perception (natural beauty, appreciation of nature)

• How do we change attitudes (disconnect, social influence)?• How do we get people to do things they don’t want to do?• How do we build self-concept as an environmentalist

(motivation)• How do we prompt these behaviors?

Judith Owen (HC – Biology)

Biology, Health and the Environment

Biology, Health and the EnvironmentJudy Owen, Haverford (jowen@haverford.edu)

• Formal training in Biochemistry and Immunology – how the organism perceives threats in its environment

• Course at CDC on the teaching of “Environmental Health”

• 100-200 level course is named to discriminate it from BMC Environmental Health offering – course will also qualify for credit towards the Health Studies Minor

• Basic lectures/flipped classroom will describe concept of environmental health, toxicology, health threats in air, water, ground, buildings and food sources, including the occurrence of food deserts

• Case studies/project work in last three weeks of class followed by student presentations.

http://www.cdc.gov/news/2007/06/images/bldg19_300px.jpg

https://i1.ytimg.com/vi/SgI_bRMAnFo/hqdefault.jpg

Jennifer Peck (SC - Economics

Environmental Policy and Economics

Robert Weinberg (SC- History)

Environmental Policies of Soviet Era Russia

Aral Sea

• Dr. Weinberg realized that this was the last year that ES would give out the new course development grants and wanted to teach a class in ES – Ecology in the Soviet Union was his inspiration. He teaches deals with some of this in his regular classes but wanted to do one focused.

• The Aral Sea became the focus because of what has been happening to it ecologically. The Aral Sea was the 4th largest lake in the Soviet Union and is now 10% of what it was. It has become a dried out lake, ships are drydocked – all because of economic development in Soviet Union.

• Soviets drained water from two channels to Aral Sea – As water dried up in rivers, it also dried up in the Aral Sea Land became exposed and created dust storms. Materials leached back into soil (herbicides, pesticides) – impacted health (breast milk, high mortality for children, respiratory issues).

• They needed development but didn’t think about consequences. They are trying to undo it but it will be a hard battle.

Rachel Hoang (HC – Biology)

Introduction to Genetics and the Environment

Introduction to Genetics and the Environment(Rachel Hoang – Haverford Biology)

MODERN GENOMICS

What? - Principles & approaches

of modern genetics

- Biodiversity- Genetic engineering

- Genetics & env in health and disease

Where? Haverford

Who? Non-science majors

Category A - core

When? 2015-16

(elements earlier in Superlab)

Why? - Framework for

understanding env issues- Connections between genetics, evolution & env- Communication with

scientists

Strengthen links to Env Studies (Jon only regular

contributor)

Jason Schmink (BMC – Chemistry)

Principles and Practices of Green Chemistry

K. David Harrison (SC – Linguistics)

Linguistic Anthropology: The Language—Environment Interface

• Dr. Harrison never thought about himself as an environmental studies person. But as soon as you begin to look at language and culture you begin to get in touch with environmental aspects.

• Dr. Harrison’s course was inspired by folks in communities in the Andies in Bolivia - #1 topic for nomadic, farming societies is environmentalism. It informs their whole world.

• For Kaliawaya speakers, their language is under threat, language base about environmentalism under threat.

• “Each language has unique conceptual systems and taxonomies for classifying and managing the natural world. The course will explore whether these biological eco-systems can be adequately understood at all in isolation from the languages and cutures that have co-evolved with them.”

Farid Azfar (SC – History)

Histories of Water

• Dr. Azfar came to Histories of Water through interest in rivers. He wasn’t thinking about environmental change.

• He thought about how societies change through history pertaining to water – Historiography of water. He eventually changed to crisis as a frame for the history of water – but then went out to CA and his thoughts there changed from crisis because there is a way that rhetoric of crisis brings a managerial quality to the issue. Made it seem very myopic.

• He also began thinking about the form of history that is about reclamation. He became interested in CA – cross temporal region – all kinds of water issues and had conversations with people who recommended books, reports from World Bank – had long history of water, etc. He began to see the history of water through a variety of lenses.

• In the last year or so, there has been a lot of talk about the temporality of water histories as told in media….revolutionary sound to the way water is described. Students coming in have been shaped by these narratives….they need an act of reimagination – use water to reimagine the frames of many of the fields that touch it.