EJCR: Engaged Scholarship

Students in class outdoors under a tree

At the heart of the Environmental Justice & Community Resilience (EJCR) Program is a commitment to engaged scholarship—an approach to learning that integrates academic inquiry with community-based action for justice. This page serves as a growing archive of the courses, faculty, and student projects that connect the classroom to the communities we aim to serve.

Through partnerships with local organizations, hands-on research, and creative public-facing work, EJCR-affiliated courses and collaborations exemplify what it means to study with rather than about communities. From data visualization projects on air quality in Chester, to student-built websites amplifying grassroots solar initiatives, these efforts reflect an interdisciplinary, intersectional vision of environmental justice in action.

Explore the resources below to learn more about how Swarthmore students and faculty are practicing engaged scholarship through the EJCR network.

Students at reentry farm

ENVS 043/ENGL 089/SOAN 020M - Race, Gender, Class, and the Environment

This course explores how ideologies and structures of race, gender, sexuality, and class are embedded in and help shape our perceptions of and actions in the “environment.” Drawing on key social and cultural theories of environmental studies from anthropology, sociology, feminist analysis, and science and technology studies, we will examine some of the ways that differences in culture, power, and knowledge construct the conceptual frameworks and social policies undertaken in relation to the environment. 

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Students wearing C4 shirts gathered with Ms Zulene and Prof DiChiro

ENVS 035/SOAN 035 - Environmental Justice: Ethnography, Politics, Action

Intro to the history and theory of environmental justice, an interdisciplinary field that examines how inequalities, based on race, class, ethnicity, and gender shape how people are impacted by environmental problems and how they advocate for social and environmental change. Drawing on the social sciences, natural sciences, and the arts & humanities, we critically examine the conceptual divisions between “nature and society,” “urban and rural,” and the “community and the planet.” We analyze the history of the widely used concept of “sustainability” focusing on the ways it has been used in different cultural and urban contexts. 

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Students at farm

ENVS 042/ENGL 089E: Ecofeminism(s)

An introduction to the central themes and histories of ecofeminist theories and praxis. We will study ecological feminisms/feminist environmentalisms from global perspectives, and examine how these transdisciplinary discourses and movements develop social and cultural critiques of systems of domination, and construct alternative visions for more just and sustainable human-earth relationships. 

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