Finding Our Place on a Changing Planet

Stanford Environmental Humanities explores the intersection of human culture and the natural world.

Latest issue Issue 01 — Where Are We Now? Inside 4 student works across 3 themes Start reading Open the issue →

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Where Are We Now? · 4 works · 3 themes

The Brief

The field, the course, and the questions driving student work

A thought experiment

Imagine you woke up tomorrow in a perfectly sustainable society

What would this look like, and what would it have taken to get here?
Would our work be complete – or is there a chance we could have missed the point?
What does sustainability even mean?

Dr. Sarah Chen Doerr School

Student Exploration in a New Field

In the first quarter of Stanford's new Doerr School of Sustainability, students in a new environmental humanities course explored a range of questions around today's accelerating environmental challenges – thinking critically about narratives of human progress and cultural paradigms around human-nature relationships.

Books and nature representing interdisciplinary thinking

Environmental Humanities

Expansive thinking and deep questioning are hallmarks of the environmental humanities – an interdisciplinary field that brings together the sciences and humanities to probe at the cultural, ethical, and philosophical roots of environmental challenges.

From the editors

Read on for a selection of students' work: frank depictions of grief and overwhelm, glimpses into personal relationships with the more-than-human world, illustrative imaginings of futures both dark and hopeful, visions for solutions, and attempts to hold a set of challenges that can sometimes feel beyond grasp.

01 Issues

04 Student works

03 Themes

04 Student authors

Read the latest issue

Issue 01 — Where Are We Now?