Fall Electives

Urban Ecology

The emerging science of urban ecology is broadly defined as the study of relationships between living organisms and environment within cities. In this course we will use New York City as a living laboratory to introduce key concepts, including: the environmental history of NYC; landscape ecology and urban biodiversity; the types and distribution of forests, wetlands, meadows and microhabitats in NYC; urban agriculture and food systems; watersheds and watersystems; and ecological restoration. Sessions will include field trips to parks, natural areas, the American Museum of Natural History, talks and screenings. Students will do independent field work and keep a nature journal.

Art of Mapping: History and Practice of Cartography

Cartography, the science of drawing maps, has oriented people in the cosmos for centuries. Maps are powerful tools for artists, designers and illustrators to communicate complex patterns and create immersive visuals. In this course students will learn how to use open source platforms such as QGIS, Locus Tempus, StoryMaps, Ocellus and Google Earth to create precise and evocative digital maps. The fundamentals of spatial analysis will be covered — gathering data, testing hypotheses and visualizing conclusions. Students will collect and interpret qualitative and quantitative data on location and use open source datasets like OpenData NYC and iNaturalist. We will use this data to generate interactive maps and test hypotheses about distribution and correlation. Through field work students will explore the environment of New York City while developing a portfolio of hand-drawn and digital maps.

Spring Electives

Environmental Studies

How do humans relate to the natural world? This is a question at the core of science, politics and art. In environmental studies we approach this relationship from different perspectives. This survey course introduces students to environmental science, history and design with an emphasis on systems thinking. Students read Naomi Klein, Gregory Bateson, Diane Ackerman, Anna Tsing and other luminaries in the field and watch nature documentaries like When Whales Walked and Serengeti Rules. The semester is divided into four parts: climate change and natural disasters (Hurricane Maria & Puerto Rico); migration and cognition (monarch butterflies & humpback whales); keystone species (ecological restoration, oysters & mycorrhizal fungi); and sustainable design. Field work and field trips complement a sampling of all things environmental.

The Path Is Made By Walking: Travel Writing

Travel endears the world to us. It helps us grasp and critique our place in society. In this course we will read classics of travel writing, from Basho to Bruce Chatwin. We will read travelogs by a diversity of writers, from naturalists like Edwin Way Teale and Nan Shepherd to brilliant essayists like Rebecca Solnit and Teju Cole to novelists who played with the genre like Cortazar and Calvino. We will also do a fair bit of traveling ourselves around the city, and workshop stories about our own voyages, past and present. We will try our hand at rising to the challenges that travel writing poses: How to describe a place — a room, a street, a city, a landscape — so vividly that the reader can look and walk around. How to develop characters from first impressions and evoke the quirks of a place by telling the stories of the people you meet along the way. How to write about vastly different perspectives honestly. And how to create a narrative arc out of the randomness of real life. This course is perfect for those who love being present in the moment, careful observers, good listeners, rememberers and storytellers.