This course centers on the environment as a mediator for social action to understand how ecological change impacts and is impacted by structures of race and indigeneity. Using historical and present-day examples, this course will investigate the intersections of race and indigeneity in ecological change in the United States as experienced by Native people. Assignments for this course include written reflections based on weekly readings, an end-of the-term research paper, a creative collage, and a class presentation.

This class offers an overview of the history, pharmacology, cultural uses and changing attitudes about psychedelic and other psychoactive substances around the world. After introducing the field of ethnobotany and its role in drug 'discovery' the course surveys shamanism from various perspectives: transcultural psychiatry, altered states of consciousness, New Age spirituality and the science of 'plant intelligence.' Readings investigate the legal and scientific repercussions of the 'psychedelic revolution,' while providing a critical assessment of questions around criminalization, commodification and appropriations of Indigenous knowledge.

The course focuses on the social forces that shape design thinking. Its objective is to introduce architectural and urban design issues to build design and critical thinking skills from a multidisciplinary perspective. The studio is team-taught from faculty across disciplines to expose students to the multiple forces within which design operates.

This seminar explores the history of early modern European printing and its materials, with a focus on Albrecht Dürer. An underlying assumption of the course is that art-making materials and practices are linked to contemporary conceptions and theories of nature. From 1450 to 1850, the natural resources most commonly deployed for printing were wood, metal, and stone. Their use was shaped by environmental conditions, and had an impact on the ecology of their places of origin. While the course will focus on European print culture, and Albrecht Dürer when possible, it also will refer to early modern print materials and practices from East Asia.

Objective/Overview: Analysis of fundamental processes in the hydrologic cycle, including precipitation, evapotranspiration, infiltration, streamflow and groundwater flow. The class focuses on exercises using observational data. There is a modeling and data analysis component using Python and Jupyter Notebooks, readings on flood and drought, and a forecasting competition.

Over the next several decades environmental sustainability will be a major challenge for engineers and society to overcome. This course is an introduction to environmental biotechnology focusing on how the applications of biotechnologies are impacting sustainability efforts in a variety of sectors including water systems, food and chemical production, and infrastructure construction. This course will provide a broad background in biological design concepts across scales from molecules to ecosystems, how bioengineering enables the design of new biotechnologies, and the ethical implications of engineering biology for use in the environment.

A modern view of water resources, combining physical and engineering principles of hydrology, hydraulics and environmental fluid mechanics with the broader historical and social aspects of sustainable development. Examples from both ancient and modern civilizations will be analyzed. Teams of students will develop interconnected design projects on water distribution, hydrologic hazards, and sustainable use of water resources, with emphasis on interdisciplinary communication among stakeholders.

This course covers pollutant chemicals in the environment with a focus on water and soil. The focus is on hazardous and toxic chemicals such as benzene, trichloroethane, pesticides and PCBs. In this course, environmental chemistry serves as a vehicle for study of chemical thermodynamics. Students gain an understanding of Gibbs free energy, chemical potential, and fugacity, and the universal applicability of thermodynamics to describe equilibrium and kinetic processes such as phase partitioning.

Life processes depend on over 25 elements whose bioinorganic chemistry is relevant to the environment (biogeochemical cycles), agriculture, and health. CHM 544 surveys the bioinorganic chemistry of the elements. In-depth coverage of key transition metal ions including manganese, iron, copper, and molybdenum focuses on redox roles in anaerobic and aerobic systems and metalloenzymes that activate small molecules and ions, including hydrogen, nitrogen, nitrate, nitric oxide, oxygen, superoxide, and hydrogen peroxide. Appreciation of the structure and reactivity of metalloenzyme systems is critical to understanding life at the molecular level.

This course uses microeconomic analysis (specifically, tools drawn from demand/supply analysis, development, trade, and public economics) to study issues related to agriculture and food. These include the role of agriculture in the global economy and in economic development; biofuels; the Green Revolution and GMOs; agriculture and the environment/climate change; agricultural trade and trade disputes; hunger, famines and food aid; and food insecurity and obesity in the U.S. The course assesses whether farm, food and nutrition policies in poor and rich countries, including the U.S., address current challenges.

The Paris Accord signaled global consensus on the need for a rapid switch to clean energy and industrial production. In recent years this resulted in ever increasing pledges by nations, states and organizations to reach net-zero by midcentury. Not well understood are the immense scale and speed of this transformation. Princeton's Net-Zero America study and similar efforts in Australia and elsewhere have provided highly granular insights on the implications for the environment, finances, jobs, and diverse stakeholder interests. Students will build on these insights with interdisciplinary case studies for ambitious zero emissions hubs.

Principles and design of solar energy conversion systems. Quantity and availability of solar energy. Physics and chemistry of solar energy conversion: solar optics, optical excitation, capture of excited energy, and transport of excitations or electronic charge. Conversion methods: thermal, wind, photoelectric, photoelectrochemical, photosynthetic, biomass. Solar energy systems: low and high temperature conversion, photovoltaics. Storage of solar energy. Conversion efficiency, systems cost, and lifecycle considerations.

How can literature and film bring to life ideals of environmental justice and the lived experience of environmental injustice? This seminar will explore how diverse communities across the globe are unequally exposed to risks like climate change and toxicity and how communities have unequal access to the resources vital to sustaining life. Issues we will address include: climate justice, the Anthropocene, water security, deforestation, the commons, indigenous movements, the environmentalism of the poor, the gendered and racial dimensions of environmental justice, and the imaginative role of filmmakers and writer-activists.

This course immerses students in diverse forms of storytelling about climate change in a US context - from photojournalism and data visualization to podcasting, documentary film, and the longform essay. Informed by these models, students work in teams on a semester-long collaborative project to develop an original climate story focused on a specific place, person, or community. Teams are formed based on student interests and experience.

Foundational ENV course. Introduces students to key concepts and approaches in environmental studies from the perspective of the humanities and social sciences. Focus is on the evolving history of environmental movements, including wilderness-centered conservation and deep ecology, urban-centered environmentalism, Indigenous sovereignty and land back, and climate justice. Emphasizes US environmental movements since the 1960s, with points of comparisons to other time periods and national contexts.

The climate crisis is an issue for which the past is paramount. From past efforts to entrench fossil fuels to the historical inequalities that have shaped which communities are most vulnerable to climate disasters, the past looms large in the present and future. This class explores the history of global warming in three parts. The first part, Crisis, focuses on its causes and controversies. The second, Energy and Mitigation, explores past experiences with low-carbon energy and other mitigation strategies. The third part, Extreme Weather and Adaptation, covers past experiences with the extreme weather at the frontlines of the crisis.

Humans increasingly dominate environmental systems throughout the world. To understand human impacts on the environment, quantitative modeling tools are needed. This course introduces quantitative modeling approaches for different environmental systems, including global models for carbon cycling; local and regional models for water, soil, and vegetation; models for transport of pollutants in water and air; and models for the spread of infectious disease. Students will develop simple models for all these systems and apply the models to a set of practical problems.

Americans have built and preserved an astounding variety of environments. The course examines the evolving complex of incentives and regulations that drove the choices of where and how places developed. It focuses on how land-use and environmental planning encourage or discourage growth and can mitigate or intensify environmental, social, and economic effects. We examine the latest tools for building and protecting the American landscape. Special topics include transportation, food and agriculture, environmental justice, and climate change. Analysis will be from historical, policy-oriented, and predictive perspectives.

This course examines U.S. case law and policy decisions that have shaped the legal and regulatory framework of environmental law. It covers key legal doctrines and environmental policies through formal lectures, complemented by interactive moot courts. In these sessions, students are paired to argue either the plaintiff or defendant position in key environmental cases, with their arguments evaluated by a jury panel.

The class will discuss the physics of ocean surface waves and its impacts on human life. We will cover the principle of ocean waves propagation across the oceans, with analogies to optics and acoustics. Using historical observations and modern modeling tools, we will discuss wave forecasting with practical examples including planning of D-Day during the second world war, or local surf forecasting. The influence of ocean waves on human life will be discussed, from their role on beach morphology, mitigation of storm surge, or tsunamis. Finally, we will discuss the ubiquitous representation of waves in arts/movies.

This course focuses on a quantitative understanding of the chemistry of the atmosphere and natural waters on Earth, while exploring some of today's most pressing environmental issues, including the greenhouse effect, ocean acidification, urban smog, the ozone hole, acid mine drainage, and coastal dead zones. The goal is to leverage the laws of chemistry to understand our current environment, make sense of remediation strategies and explore the future.

This workshop will expose participants to some of the most dynamic, adventurous environmental nonfiction writers while also giving students the opportunity to develop their own voices as environmental writers. We'll be looking at the environmental essay, the memoir, opinion writing, and investigative journalism. In the process we'll discuss the imaginative strategies deployed by leading environmental writers and seek to adapt some of those strategies in our own writing. Readings will engage urgent concerns of our time, like climate change, extinction, race, gender and the environment, and relations between humans and other life forms.

Students will learn basic concepts related to climate and how it controls different components of the global water budget. Emphasis will be placed on dominant large scale climate modes (e.g., El Niño-Southern Oscillation). The role of major types of storms (e.g., tropical cyclones, atmospheric rivers) as flood agents will be addressed. Climate change, its possible causes and the interaction with the living world will be discussed. Statistical methods to examine the relation between climate and hydrologic variables will be introduced. Basic computer coding and math skills are required.

How do technologies, infrastructures, and large-scale environmental interventions tangle with social, political, and ethical concerns? This course considers infrastructures like dams, canals, pipelines, power facilities, and others, in the process of creating new environments, also create new ideas of power, governance, and political economy. We think globally with the history of large-scale environmental infrastructures, from colonial landscape interventions to actual and proposed plants for generating green power, to explore how environmental technologies interact with societies across time and space.

For centuries, energy infrastructure has been located in coastal communities where traditional livelihoods on the water persist. This seminar explores how these communities and other communities experiencing energy injustices offer extreme cases of 'living oil,': indebted to the fossil fuels which also imperil them. Case studies explore coal, oil, and gas histories and cultures, including emergent alliances of energy justice advocates. We pay close attention to insights of residents, and activities and assignments offer opportunities to develop embodied learning practices and to explore research methods to amplify community voices.

The ocean and the atmosphere control Earth's climate, which in turn influences the ocean. We explore ocean and atmospheric circulation, their chemical compositions and interactions that make up the climate system, including exchanges of heat and carbon, and how these circulations control marine ecosystems and biogeochemical cycles. The course focuses on climate change and human impacts, including effects on aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems from increased atmospheric carbon dioxide. This course is suitable for students concentrating in science or engineering or pursuing the Climate Science minor. One weekly precept complements lectures.

The course covers concepts related to the chemistry of inorganic and organic materials found in the pristine and contaminated settings in the Earth surface environments, with an introduction to the modern field sampling techniques and advanced laboratory analytical and imaging tools. Different materials characterization methods, such as optical, infrared, and synchrotron X-ray spectroscopy and microscopy, will also be introduced. Field sampling and analysis of materials from diverse soil and coastal marine environments will be the focus during the second half of the semester.

Microbes were the first life forms on Earth and are the most abundant life forms today. Their metabolisms underpin the cycling of carbon, nitrogen, and other important elements through Earth systems. This course will cover the fundamentals of microbial physiology and ecology and examine how microbial activities have shaped modern and ancient environments, with the goal of illustrating the profound influence of microbial life on our planet for over 3 billion years.

This course explores the fundamentals of climate dynamics. Through examination of the coupled interactions between the atmosphere, oceans, land, and cryosphere, students will investigate how these systems drive climate variability and change across timescales ranging from weeks to millennia. Topics include: global energy balance, atmospheric and oceanic circulation, the hydrologic cycle, climate sensitivity and feedbacks, and paleoclimate. Students will study a hierarchy of climate models, from theoretical frameworks to comprehensive general circulation models, and assess the mechanisms behind major climate feedbacks and modes of variability.

This course examines the chemical composition of the oceans and the physical, chemical, and biological processes governing this composition in the past and present. Emphasis on the cycles of major elements including nutrients, carbon, and oxygen, involved in structuring marine ecosystems and regulating Earth's climate on time scales of years to millions of years. Processes and phenomena include oceanic chemical fluxes at the ocean-atmosphere and ocean-sediment interfaces, the interactions of ocean biogeochemical cycles with the physical climate system and biodiversity, and the ongoing anthropogenic perturbations.

The word 'ecology' evokes the scientific discipline that studies the interactions between and among organisms and their environments, and also resonates with the environmental movement of the sixties, green politics, and conservation. This course explores the historical development of ecology as a professional science, before turning to the political and social ramifications of ecological ideas. Throughout the course, we will situate the history of ecological ideas in their cultural, political, and social context.

This course is about human-animal relations in history, specifically the management of predator attacks on human beings. The course examines the idea, common among conservationists around the world, that predators that attack humans are "problem animals" by definition and must be killed. The course draws on a range of primary and secondary to challenge the claim that predators that attack humans acquire a taste for human flesh and must, therefore, be killed lest they become a danger to all humans.

In Latin America, the extraction of silver, dyes, cash crops (sugar, bananas, wheat), guano, petroleum, and more broadly water, soil, energy, and human labor embedded in goods from the 15th to the 21st centuries fed the rise of capitalism and its imperialist expansion. This impacted environments and human relationships with and within them throughout the continent. The seminar analyzes such impacts through the environmental history of subsistence agriculture, monoculture, deforestation, the control and degradation of water and soil, mining, urban pollution, conservationism, climate change, "sustainable development", and activism.

Overview of the issues surrounding global energy supplies, oil's unique physical and economic properties, and its role in shaping the political economy of the Middle East and U.S. strategic interests in the region. Discuss availability of energy sources, the state of technology, the functioning of energy markets, the challenges of coping with global climate change and the key role of the oil reserves in the Middle East. Then focus on the history of oil and gas in the Middle East and its impact on societies in the region.

"Nature is perhaps the most complex word in the language," writes Raymond Williams in his celebrated book Keywords. This course explores the many meanings of "nature" and attitudes towards the environment in East European literature. We will examine responses to political projects such as collectivization, industrialization, and resource extraction, and trace how ideas about progress competed with aspirations for conservation and agrarian living. Looking at works from Poland, Ukraine, Hungary, and the former Soviet Union, we will investigate how literary forms shape our understanding of ourselves in relation to the more-than-human world.

This course examines the ways domestic US and international environmental regulatory frameworks adopt, interpret and otherwise accommodate scientific information. The course focuses on several case studies, that provide insights into the science-policy interactions which emerge from managing natural resources and environmental risk. Topics include air pollution; climate change; ozone depletion; managing the world's forests, fisheries, and ecosystem services, and global trade in wildlife. Students will explore the science underlying these issues as well as current policies and the range of future policy responses.

This course introduces you to environmental justice, which examines the processes that systematically lead poor and marginalized communities to face a disproportionate degree of environmental risks and hazards. Beginning with the birth of the environmental justice movement focused on the siting of waste facilities, we will trace the development of the field as it has expanded into examination of food, climate, water, energy, and the international waste trade.

How do you tell a story about climate change that dynamically engages its audiences without overwhelming or boring them? We will explore this question and others through readings and discussions, and we will make an original work of theater. Employing the methods of investigative theater, the class will create a script or performance text by pursuing a creative inquiry into some aspect of climate change. Each student will do creative research including interviews; collaborate on a script by editing and writing original material; and work with a team to put the show on its feet. Previous theater experience not required.