ENVI 254
Food, Forests, & Fungi: Environmental Health in the Anthropocene Spring 2024
Division II W Writing Skills D Difference, Power, and Equity
Cross-listed ANTH 254 / STS 254
This is not the current course catalog

Class Details

This tutorial will examine the impacts of the climate crisis on human, environmental, and planetary health via the lens of food systems & plant medicines in the Anthropocene. We use anthropological, environmental, evolutionary, & ecological approaches to explore the ecosystems connecting humans, plants, animals, and fungi that have been massively disrupted by systems of industrial agriculture, industrial forestry, corporate food systems, and corporate biomedicine. We will dwell on the growing signs of our climate catastrophe including the sharp rise of global temperatures, floods, hurricanes, alongside declining freshwater reserves, melting cryosphere, and falling crop yields, that are helping produce a growing wave of hunger and climate refugees in every world region. Along the way, we will hear from and read about youthful climate activists from Extinction Rebellion, Ende Gelände, Fridays for the Future, 350.org, and the Sunrise Movement who are designing and implementing innovative, local, and sustainable solutions to inaction, apathy, and inertia even as situations of internal migration or displacement, food scarcity, food sovereignty, water shortages, and other climate-related disruptions are increasing in both developing and developed parts of our globe. We learn how activist narratives intersect with wider movements to promote more local and circular economies of regenerative agriculture and forestry, ethically produced and sourced organic food, wild & cultivated botanicals, and complementary medicines that are healing both humans and the planet.
The Class: Format: tutorial
Limit: 10
Expected: 10
Class#: 3619
Grading: no pass/fail option, no fifth course option
Requirements/Evaluation: Weekly attendance, reading 200-300 pages/week, weekly lead essays or oral responses to texts, showing up in mind & body each week.
Prerequisites: none, but a class in ENVI or ANTH preferred
Enrollment Preferences: ANTH, ENVI, STS majors and concentrators
Distributions: Divison II Writing Skills Difference, Power, and Equity
Notes: This course is cross-listed and the prefixes carry the following divisional credit:
ANTH 254 Division II ENVI 254 Division II STS 254 Division II
WS Notes: Students will write essays: either a lead essay of 1400 words, or written & oral feedback on the lead essay plus an oral response to text. Students receive intensive weekly feedback on their essays and a mid semester writing chat with instructor to negotiate and understand strengths and weaknesses of their writing.
DPE Notes: We will examine the ways that food systems reproduce social and structural inequalities within public health, environmental health, climate health. We also examined the interconnected nature of the health of our planet, food systems, forests, and fungal networks and how climate activism and action can fight unequal access to food, forests, nature, and health.
Attributes: ENVI Humanities, Arts + Social Science Electives
PHLH Nutrition,Food Security+Environmental Health

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