New Courses and Rapid Growth in Environmental Humanities at Yale
Image source: “Yale Center for British Art Welcomes Environmental Humanities Graduate Students for a Behind-the-Scenes Visit”
In a recent feature, Yale News writer Lisa Prevost highlights the remarkable growth of Yale Environmental Humanities, an interdisciplinary initiative launched in 2018 to integrate environmental themes across culture, history, and the arts. As the program has expanded rapidly in response to student demand, it has remained focused on its core mission: helping students understand the deep connections between culture and the natural world. In the Spring 2026 semester alone, Yale Environmental Humanities offered 42 undergraduate and 36 graduate courses.
Paul Sabin, Faculty Director of Yale Environmental Humanities, Co-Chair of the Environmental Studies Program, and Professor of History, attributes this growth to a wave of recent faculty hires across multiple departments. Rather than keeping environmental studies confined to science and policy, these professors are embedding ecological topics into core humanities disciplines such as classics, literature, art history, and architecture.
The Yale News article highlights the breadth of the current curriculum through several courses offered over the past academic year:
● “Readings in Roman Environmental Thought” (Classics): This advanced Latin course offers the opportunity for students to spend the day baking with ancient grains.
● “Black Environmental Thought” (English and Black Studies): This seminar discusses the concept that the environmental crisis is a crisis of imagination, and the act of seeking out alternative images for the human-nature relationship is Black literature.
● “The Culture of Landscape in China” (East Asian Languages and Literatures): A course tracing China’s historical relationship with nature through early myths, imperial parks, private gardens, and landscape poetry.
● “Animals in French Visual Culture, 1750–1900” (History of Art): This class analyzes historical artwork to examine animals as active cultural and political agents rather than mere symbols.
● “Cartographies of Climate Change” (Architecture, Graduate Seminar): A space for students to ask themselves, “What role do architects have in addressing the challenges of climate change?” by representing its effects through maps, drawing, and collage.
As environmental challenges grow more complex, this expanding curriculum demonstrates how the humanities offer critical historical, cultural, and philosophical frameworks to complement scientific and technical solutions.
To view full course descriptions or learn about the Graduate Certificate, visit the Yale Environmental Humanities website.