Syllabus for Fall 2025 Birds: Nature, Joy, Belonging (TUT-100-23)

Accessible and beautiful, birds are found almost everywhere in the world and in almost every habitat, gracing us with flashes of color and bursts of song. Birds can teach us how to observe, how to listen, and how to connect to place and be in the present. Sources of everyday joy and artistic inspiration, birds are also important as indicator species who help us understand how and why the environment is changing. This tutorial seeks to connect us to our immediate environment—where we live, work, study, and play—through the enlivening presence of birds, and to foster greater ecological and social well-being. Using an interdisciplinary and environmental justice framework, we will learn about the lives and ways of birds from ornithologists as well as from poets, from environmental philosophers as well as environmental activists. We will not only read and discuss birds in connection to nature, joy, and belonging, we will also go birding around campus, in parks, and at nature preserves aroun

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• Anh Pham