Farmers Market

"Come here expecting to be inspired by the opportunity for change and your knowledge of how to do it. Come here to gain an abundance of new knowledge that may lead you in new directions or will greatly strengthen your ability to play a role leading this society to better alternatives." Todd Beer, Program Graduate, 2003

Program Themes

Our graduate seminars fall into three curricular categories: economic and political dimensions; socio-cultural dimensions: race, class, gender and place; and ecological dimensions.

Environment and Community graduate seminars are interdisciplinary and most extend into more than one curriculum category. While acknowledging the transboundary nature of most seminars, each seminar is nevertheless associated with a particular curriculum category. The following descriptions of each category convey the general content, objectives, and topics of the seminars listed under that category.

Political and Economic Emphasis

Seminars within this curricular category:

1. provide analytical frameworks for understanding the role of political and economic institutions, discourses, organizations, and movements;
2. study competing normative arguments about the role played by the state, markets, democracy, liberalism, globalization, technology, and participation;
3. cultivate recognition of diverse forms of power;
4. critically examine strategies, obstacles, and opportunities for change.

Topics that may be addressed include political theory (liberalism, democracy, justice, property rights), environmentalism, environmental policy, environmental security, national and international environmental governance, environmental politics, conflict resolution, grassroots and transnational social justice movements, international development.

Socio-cultural Emphasis

Seminars within this curricular category:

1. provide an understanding of the categories of race/ethnicity, class, gender, and place, including their social construction and varied intersections;
2. explore the role of culture and its production/reproduction;
3. cultivate critical reflexivity and a willingness to entertain multiple epistemologies and to explore other subjectivities/emic perspectives;
4. explore historical processes behind and the global dimensions of contemporary issues;
5. study how environmental perceptions and values are produced, reproduced and changed by culture.

Topics that may be addressed include race, gender, and the environment, international development and post-development, rural communities and natural resources, subaltern studies, globalization, community formation, social movement theory, and environmental health.

Ecological Emphasis

Seminars within this curricular category:

1. provide a basic understanding of at least one biophysical process or cycle;
2. focus on human-environment interactions;
3. explore analytical and/or applied methods associated with reducing negative human impacts on the environment.

Topics that may be addressed include natural resource management, energy use and conservation, valuation and use of ecosystem services, biodiversity and conservation, adaptations to climate change, and other similar areas.