Environmental anthropology is a sub-specialty within the field of anthropology that takes an active role in examining the relationships between humans and their environment across space and time.
Our faculty conduct research in a number of areas pertaining to the sociocultural dynamics producing environmental problems and environmentalisms. These areas include the politics of exposure; logics, cultures, and practices of extractive economies; the making of expert and lay knowledges as such; indigenous and environmentalist political formations; human-environment relations and human-nonhuman relations more broadly, conceptualizations of the anthropocene and alternatives thereof. Some of the emerging issues motivating our research include coltan mining, climate and atmospheric changes, crude oil, cows, and fracking. Several of our courses treat environmental topics, including ANT 130: Ecology and Politics and ANT 109: Visualizing Science. At the graduate level, seminars consider such topics as nature-cultures, human-nonhuman relations, and cosmopolitical ecologies. Students learn to think methodologically and conceptually across allied fields, such as environmental humanities, science and technology studies, and cultural geography.