HUMN-307-SU01-2023: Environmental Ethics
This course offers the opportunity to explore specific issues and texts in the humanities. The issues and readings will vary but, students will gain a better understanding of contemporary thought and methods in philosophy, history, or literature, especially as they relate to critical issues in art and design.
Mounting concerns about a variety of environmental issues, from pollution to global warming to the extinction of species, have begun to inform the practices in art, design, and media. Those concerns imply forms of action being taken about those issues. But what ethical assumptions underlie various actions. Is it a concern for human well-being? For animals? For all life? Or, even more broadly, for ecosystems? In other words, which things count ethically? The primary goal of this course is to prepare students to understand and to critically evaluate various ethical perspectives on human beings' interactions with nature and these perspectives' applications to environmental issues. An important secondary goal is to provide students with tools to integrate those perspectives into their practice as cultural workers and future makers.
- Teacher: Patricia Vera