ENVI 260
Design and Environmental Justice Spring 2024
Division II Difference, Power, and Equity
Cross-listed ARTS 261

Class Details

This seminar/digital art studio offers key literature to examine the relationship between design and environmental justice. It will help build a vocabulary to study the environment as disputed terrain between technological fixes and issues of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, class, and colonial status. Students will develop textual/graphic projects about a chosen case study aiming to reorient public perception and imagination around environmental justice. Case studies include contemporary issues like “natural” disasters, eco-cities, and urbanization in the Global South and North. Skills taught include design-thinking and collaborative design, digital art (Photoshop), and participation in collective reviews and public presentations. The class culminates in a presentation to external reviewers and a final exhibition.
The Class: Format: seminar; Because this seminar is cross-listed with ARTS, there is a studio component (short assignments and final project).
Limit: 15
Expected: 12
Class#: 3309
Grading: no pass/fail option, no fifth course option
Requirements/Evaluation: Active presence in class discussions and presentations, quality of work, depth and quality of the investigative process, willingness to experiment, and contributions to a collaborative learning environment. This intensive seminar/digital art studio requires working in the architecture studio and/or PC lab outside of scheduled class hours.
Prerequisites: Drawing I, ENVI 101, or permission from the instructor.
Enrollment Preferences: Envi majors and concentrators, Studio Art majors, Art History and Studio Art majors
Materials/Lab Fee: $300-$450 lab fee charged to term bill. Lab and materials fees for all studio art classes are covered by the Book Grant for all Williams financial aid recipients.
Distributions: Division II Difference, Power, and Equity
Notes: This course is cross-listed and the prefixes carry the following divisional credit:
ENVI 260 Division II ARTS 261 Division I
DPE Notes: This seminar/digital art studio examines the interrelationship between design and environmental justice from an intersectional perspective. It encourages students to develop a critical understanding of the role that technical rationality, devoid of ethics and respect for difference, plays in producing racist, heteropatriarchal, and ecocidal forms of oppression. In parallel, we will explore place-based practices that counter neoliberal and extractivist approaches to the (built) environment.
Attributes: ENVI Humanities, Arts + Social Science Electives
EVST Culture/Humanities

Class Grid

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