Course Listings

The course prepares students to design and execute an intensive research project. It covers elementary principles and philosophy of science; research planning, including preparation, criticism, and oral presentation of study plans; communicating research findings; limitations of research techniques; the structure of research organizations; and professional scientific ethics

One of the most important aspects of scientific research involves the communication of research findings to the wider scientific community. Therefore, second-year M.E.Sc. and M.F.S. students are required to present the results of their faculty-supervised research as participants in the Master’s Student Research Conference, a daylong event held near the end of the spring term. Student contributors participate by delivering a fifteen-minute oral presentation to the YSE faculty and student body or by presenting a research poster in a session open to the YSE community. Students receive a score of satisfactory completion for this effort.

This workshop in audiovisual scholarship explores ways to present research through the moving image. Students work within a Public Humanities framework to make a documentary that draws on their disciplinary fields of study. Designed to fulfill requirements for the M.A. with a concentration in Public Humanities.

by Application, deadline January 8, 2024
 
With any questions, please reach out to lily.fillwalk@yale.edu
Kind regards,
Kaley Casenhiser and Lily Fillwalk

The Yale Environment Review is a student-run publication that aims to increase access to the latest developments in environmental studies. We aim to shed light on cutting-edge environmental research through summaries, analysis, and interviews. During this one-credit course, students produce one or two articles on subjects of their choosing for publication on the YER website. Please refer to our Canvas page for an overview of the different types of content that YER produces. Students receive coaching to improve their writing skills, and their work goes through a rigorous editing process. Participation in Yale Environment Review helps students sharpen their writing skills and familiarize themselves with science communication, and it provides a platform to showcase their expertise. Enrollment is limited to sixteen, and the class is selected through an application process. Application instructions can be found on our Canvas page. Please e-mail environment.review@yale.edu with any questions. Class meets five to six times throughout the term, dates to be announced. An information session will be held on a date to be determined.

 

Survey of documentaries about environmental issues, with a focus on Darwin's Nightmare (2004), An Inconvenient Truth (2006), Food, Inc. (2009), GasLand (2010), and related films. Brief historical overview, from early films such as The River (1937) to the proliferation of environmental film festivals.

This course meets during the Reading period: the week between the last week of classes and finals week

This course will give students insights into the process of writing manuscripts for publication in the natural sciences. The seminar will guide students through the stages of writing a paper and end the semester with a submitted manuscript. We will also consider various strategies for writing, accountability, time management, and productivity. The course is aimed at students in the natural sciences with cleaned and analyzed data that they want to write up for publication.

This research seminar is designed to give graduate students in history and related fields the opportunity to write a substantial research paper using historical primary sources. We will meet regularly as a class to discuss research and writing, and you will read and comment on the work of other students. Our goal will be to produce a polished piece of writing that might provide the basis for a journal article, part of a dissertation or master’s thesis, or another purpose.
 
Environmental history seeks to explain the complex, changing relationship between humans and the natural world, and its implications for both people and the planet. Research topics are broadly welcomed, with no specified geography or time period. Projects might touch on energy, public health, social movements, environmental justice, law and political economy, nature and culture, planning and design, resource management, and infrastructure and the built environment, etc. We will explore the complexities of environmental history through engagement with each other’s research projects.
 
Doctoral students in History working on topics related to twentieth-century U.S. politics, law, and economic development also are welcome to participate in this research seminar, with permission from the instructor. Graduate and professional students who are not in History, but who have a clearly defined historical research project (using historical primary sources) also are warmly invited to participate in the course, with permission from the instructor.
 
The seminar will particularly emphasize use of the many primary sources available for research, including manuscript collections held at Yale or other institutions; wide-ranging records from different branches and levels of government; newspapers, periodicals, books, and other published materials; and, collections of digitized primary sources. Over the course of the semester, we will hone our skills in navigating historical databases, searching for materials, and managing and interpreting source materials.
 
Students interested in enrolling in the course are encouraged to contact the professor at paul.sabin@yale.eduto determine whether your research interests are a good fit for the seminar.

This is a practical writing course meant to develop your skills as a writer. But its real subject is perception and the writer’s authority—the relationship between what you notice in the world around you and what, culturally speaking, you’re allowed to notice. What you write during the semester is driven entirely by your own interest and attention. How you write is the question at hand. We’ll be exploring the overlapping habitats of language—present and past—and the natural environment. And, to a lesser extent, we’ll be exploring the character of  persuasion in environmental themes. Every member of the class will write every week, and we will all read what everyone writes every week. It makes no difference whether you’re a would-be journalist, scientist, environmental advocate or policy-maker. The goal is to rework your writing and sharpen your perceptions, both sensory and intellectual. Application for interested students will be avaiable in August.

The energy transition requires about $1.2 trillion every year.  Current funding from green bonds, carbon markets and bespoke ESG funds is inadequate to meet this target.  In this course, we will examine some of the constraints and options for climate financing, look at the requirements for developing green energy projects, risk mitigation and technology options.  Particular focus will be given to the developing world where funding costs and constraints are at their most onerous.  

This seminar is based on outside speakers and internal student/faculty presentations oriented toward original research in the field of environmental and natural resource economics and policy. Presentations are aimed at the doctoral level, but interested master’s students may enroll with permission of the instructors.

In recent years, there has been a proliferation of sovereignties in academic research and professional practice. In some cases, expressions of sovereignty are entwined with environmental integrity, while in others, sovereignty is aligned with environmental extraction. Likewise, sovereignty can be associated with hierarchical power—taken to mean “supreme authority”—or with grassroots action and citizens’ self-determination. Drawing from scholarship in the humanities and social sciences, this course considers multiple meanings and contestations of sovereignty in relation to the environment, including Indigenous sovereignties, national sovereignties, energy sovereignties, food sovereignties, and the rights of nature.

The course explores fundamental principles and procedures of risk assessment and management by considering a diverse set of environmental case studies.  Topics include nuclear technologies, agricultural chemicals, plastics, wildfire smoke, drinking water contamination, hazardous site remediation, and land use regulations in coastal zones.  Students will prepare their own critiques of case risk assessments and complete a research paper by the end of the course.  We examine how risks are perceived differently and why, how they are assessed,  and diverse governance strategies under the requirements of key statutes including the Clean Air Act, Safe Drinking Water Act, Toxic Substance Control Act, Superfund, and the Food Quality Protection Act.  Risk assessments have become the primary form of rational analysis that governments rely upon to regulate the magnitude and probabilities of diverse environmental threats.  The process is challenging and often requires the integration of knowledge from many disciplinary fields, including atmospheric science, ecology, chemistry, earth and planetary science, exposure assessment, epidemiology, and toxicology. Knowledge provided by these disciplines normally needs to be interpreted, and its quality judged to predict environmental effects, and in turn threats to human health.  

This course examines the fundamental and practical aspects of assessing exposures to environmental agents, broadly defined, in the residential, ambient, and workplace environments. The course provides the knowledge and skills to design and conduct exposure assessments, and has a particular focus on applications to environmental epidemiology and risk assessment. Indirect and direct methods of assessing exposures, such as questionnaires, environmental sampling, biological monitoring, and spatial modeling, are reviewed; and case studies and hands-on projects are presented

This course provides the foundation for doctoral study at the School of Forestry & Environmental Studies. As a major part of the course, students will learn what it means to do scholarly research as well as become adept with philosophy of science and research methodology and proposal writing, as a basis for exploring diverse approaches to formulating and addressing research questions. Students will work with their advisers to put these concepts and principles into practice to develop the basis for their dissertation research (including building bibliography, identifying and crafting research questions, formulating research hypotheses and drafting a research proposal).  Students will further learn about funding opportunities and procedures for submitting grants. The course will also cover professional ethics and responsible conduct of research, including ethical approaches to inquiry and measurement, data acquisition and management, authorship and publication, peer review, conflicts of interest, mentoring, collaborative research, and animal and human subjects research.  Finally, the course will explore ethical ways to advocate for the application of scholarly knowledge in the interest of environmental problem solving.  Weekly assigned readings will support concepts and issues addressed in class. Students will present their embryonic research ideas in class and use feedback from the group to further develop their ideas

1 course credit/credit/fail. A biweekly seminar for Dove doctoral advisees and students in the combined YSE/Anthropology doctoral program. Presentation and discussion of grant proposals, dissertation prospectuses, and dissertation chapters; trial runs of conference presentations and job talks; discussion of comprehensive exams, grantsmanship, fieldwork, data analysis, writing and publishing, and the job search; and collaborative writing and publishing projects.