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Graduate Certificate in Environmental Humanities

The Graduate Certificate in Environmental Humanities offers intensive interdisciplinary training designed to cultivate critical reflection on humanistic methods for understanding the environment and our relationship to it. By fostering a vibrant, expanded intellectual community of doctoral students spanning the humanities, sciences, and humanistic social sciences, the certificate facilitates the development of doctoral research through critical conversations with scholars both within and outside students' primary disciplinary affiliations.

AY 26-27 Application deadlines:

  • Fall: October 10, 2026
  • Winter: January 22, 2027
  • Spring: April 16, 2027

Objectives:

  1. To increase fluency with the broad range of methods and topics that inform environmental humanities research.
  2. To foster an expanded sense of intellectual community among doctoral students across the humanities, sciences, and humanistic social sciences invested in the environmental humanities.
  3. To provide intensive interdisciplinary training that emphasizes critical reflection on humanistic methods for understanding the environment and human relationships to it.
  4. To facilitate the development of doctoral research in critical conversation with scholars within and outside their primary disciplinary affiliation.
  5. To offer a valuable and distinctive credential that advances graduate students’ professional careers. 

 

Apply Here

 

Learn about the Environmental Humanities Project (EHP)

Subscribe to Environmental Humanities Listserv

environmentalhumanities [at] stanford.edu (Contact Us)

Requirements
  1. Enrolling in the Environmental Humanities Colloquium (2 units): Offered as DLCL 304, the Colloquium is a Workshop hosted at the Stanford Humanities Center (SHC). Students must enroll twice, earning one unit each time, for a total of two units. See the current academic year's programming
  2. Colloquium Leadership: After completing at least one quarter of the Colloquium, students may opt to lead it for at least one quarter. Please indicate when you would be interested in serving as a graduate student coordinator.
  3. Elective coursework (2 courses): Students must take at least two graduate-level elective courses (200-level or above) in the Environmental Humanities, each for a minimum of 3 units. Courses must be taken for a letter grade, with a minimum grade of B. See the list of recommended courses. If a course is not listed, consult your EH advisor. (Each student is assigned an EH advisor from the faculty advisory board.)
  4. EH Capstone Project: The capstone lets students apply their knowledge and showcase their intellectual growth, serving as a formal contribution to the EH community at Stanford. Students must present their capstone at the Colloquium. It can be integrated into a dissertation or stand alone, and the format is flexible: a dissertation chapter, a journal article, an undergraduate workshop, a fieldwork-based presentation, a public-facing project through Interventions @ Arcade, an introductory EH syllabus, or a curated Colloquy @ Arcade.
Eligibility & How to Apply
  • Open to Ph.D. students in any department or school at Stanford. 
  • Students will have to fill out an application including:
    • Timeline of Completion of the Certificate, including potential courses.
    • One-page rationale including problems or questions they would like to explore.
    • If TGR, they must identify a path towards completion of the certificate milestones.
Additional Guidelines

Students should discuss their certificate enrollment plans with their home departments and graduate advisors before submitting an application. Participation in the EH certificate in a timeline that exceeds to time-to-TGR or time-to-degree may not be supported by some departments due to funding constraints.

The Graduate Certificate in Environmental Humanities is issued by the Division of Literatures, Languages and Cultures, and will not appear on any University record, including your transcript and diploma. Still, you are encouraged to list the certificate on your CV and resume, including the official issuance of the certificate by the DLCL and the School of Humanities and Sciences.

Faculty Advisory Board (2026-2027)
Faculty Affiliates
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