ENV 295 - Special Topics in Environmental Studies

Credits: 3
When Offered: Offered when interest is expressed and departmental resources permit.

Prerequisites: ENV 110 and permission of the instructor.This courses examines special topics in environmental studies, such as ecotourism, the environment and development, local environmental issues, values and the environment, global fisheries, global climate change, tropical deforestation and similar topics of importance, which could change from year to year. This is a research-intensive course where the student would be expected to write a significant paper, either individually or as part of a group, of sufficient quality to be made useful to the scholarly and policy communities. May be repeated for degree credit with permission and if the topics are different.

Topics in Winter, 2010:

ENV 295A: Special Topics: Landowners and Water Quality: Stories of Changing Relationships (3). Prerequisite: ENV 110. This seminar investigates relationships between local landowners and waterways in Rockbridge County in the context of a political mandate to improve water quality in the Chesapeake Bay watershed. Students learn about the natural and human history of the area, the development and implementation of the Chesapeake Bay Act, and the current residents’ changing relationships with the land and water in Rockbridge County. Henry-Stone.

ENV 295B: Nature and Place (3). Students may not also register for REL 295. This course explores a variety of ideas about and experiences of nature and place through a consideration of work drawn from diverse disciplines including philosophy, religion, literature, art, and anthropology. What is the nature of place in our societies, and is there a place for nature in our cultures? How have human beings made places for themselves to dwell in or out of nature? What might make a place a sacred place? Kosky.

Topic in Fall, 2009:

ENV 295: The World Is What We Eat (3). Prerequisite: ENV 110 or permission of instructor. This seminar involves probing the aesthetics, ethics, and ecology of eating–the interconnections between how people think about eating, what people consume, how they produce their food, their health and well-being, and the workings and conditions of nature–soils, waters, air, plants, and animals. It focuses on the Chesapeake Bay watershed within its global context. It includes considerations of industrial and organic farming, how globalization has influenced local food supplies, the slow food and fast food movements and “the new agrarianism,” which includes not only techniques of food production and practices of rural living, but a wide constellation of cultural ideas, loyalties, sentiments and hopes. Warren J L