Environmental justice has become a pervasive conversation topic as the effects of climate change become more and more prominent in daily life. Yet environmental justice has a longer history, one that is closely related to the global health developments. In this course, we will explore what environmental justice means, how it functions as a form of public health and health activism more broadly, and why the future of public health so heavily depends on it. Through these questions, students will further learn about how issues of environment and health are deeply intertwined with social, racial, and gendered inequities. As we will explore together, this relationship has led to conflicting political and economic priorities as well as the deliberate placement of environmental hazards next to or within working-class, Black and Brown, and other marginalized communities. The class is limited to first-year students.

• PUBHLTHSOC 1011

This course will provide an overview of social and behavioral science and humanistic theories and frameworks that are currently used to: 1) understand health related behaviors; and 2) guide development of interventions and policies designed to promote positive health behavior including those that prevent, reduce or eliminate major public health problems. We will also explore the history of these theories and frameworks and the cultural and artistic approaches to change health and health related behaviors. We will use an ecological framework to examine theories at multiple levels of the culture and social ecology from individual to policy level, focusing on applications that will impact health at the population level.

• PUBHLTHSOC 3000

Dogs and rabies. Mosquitoes and malaria. Cows and the smallpox vaccine. Historically and contemporarily, the study and enactment of public health is simply rife with animals and insects, both as disease vectors and as tools. Starting in the medieval period and ending in the present day, this course will examine on a global scale how animals contributed to the creation of what we call western public health. We will ask a number of interrelated questions, including what the relationship is between interspecies ecologies and the development of western public health, why animals and insects are crucial parts of health narratives, and how we can retell traditional narratives about science and medicine through these living non-humans. In the process, students will learn how to interpret and analyze different kinds of sources to craft argumentative projects.

• PUBHLTHSOC 4010

Water supplies are becoming scarcer globally due to climate change. We use clean water- fresh and salt - in a variety of ways that provide comfort, stability, and health, making it one of the most valuable commodities on Earth. While countries in Global North are beginning to see more frequent and lengthier droughts, those in the Latin America, Africa, and South Asia have long struggled over how to distribute and use their clean water supplies. This class will examine how colonialism and its far-reaching effects have created an environment of scarce water supplies in many areas of the world. Water access is difficult to achieve, but for much of the Global South, the colonial period helped craft the problems we see today. This class will ask what colonial and postcolonial technologies' construction and use teach us about equitable clean water distribution, how social and cultural identities influence water supplies and use, and why water has been such an important element- and commodity- in our world , especially where Europeans settled and marginalized local populations.

• PUBHLTHSOC 4011