“In our era of anthropogenic climate change, we realize that people and the oceans are intertwined,” said Cohen, the Andrew B. Hammond Professor of French Language, Literature, and Civilization in the School of Humanities and Sciences (H&S). “To understand the history of the oceans, we have to understand people and how they impact the oceans and are shaped by them.”

Charting a new course between science and humanities

While creating this novel interdisciplinary curriculum will take a lot of discussion and collaboration, Cohen and Micheli have already started work. They created a project team that included Steve Palumbi, professor of oceans and of biology, Meghan Shea, doctoral student in the Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources, and recent English doctoral graduate Alexander Sherman.

They also received two grants from Stanford: a “Big Ideas for Oceans” grant from the Woods Institute for the Environment and the Oceans Department in the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability and a grant from Stanford Public Humanities in H&S.

This funding allowed them to conduct new research and pilot the course Integrative Ocean Study, which they co-taught in winter quarter 2025, bringing together humanities and scientific methods. Earlier this year, they co-organized the interdisciplinary conference Waves of Convergence at Hopkins Marine Station. In a preview of what an upcoming curriculum could look like, students from the Stanford campus traveled to Pacific Grove to interact with experts from a range of fields, present some of their work, and participate in a tide pool survey.

“We are at a time when we need to be creative and inclusive in how we address challenges our planet and people are facing,” Micheli said. “I'm deeply grateful to be at a university like Stanford that provides the space and support for this kind of interdisciplinary collaboration.”

Cohen was recently awarded a research fellowship by the Stanford Humanities Center and plans to use some of her time there building the network of scholars needed to create interdisciplinary coursework. Micheli, who chairs the Oceans Department, has already started discussions in her department over what form the curriculum might take.

Whether oceanic humanities becomes an undergraduate minor, concentration, or certificate, the ultimate goal is to give students comprehensive “ocean literacy.” This means they would not only learn the science of ocean systems, but also apply the tools of the humanities to understand people’s perceptions of the ocean and how those affect the world’s largest bodies of water.

More than 70% of the planet is covered by oceans, yet they have received limited attention in sustainability sciences, said Micheli, the David and Lucile Packard Professor of Marine Science and co-director of the Center for Ocean Solutions.

Instead, a lot of the focus has been on the “green” part of the environment, on land, where humans spend most of their time. Regardless, human activities have created rapid change in the oceans.

“The many irreplaceable services that oceans provide, including food, coastal protection, carbon sequestration, and climate regulation, are at risk, but our approaches to ocean management and risk mitigation often don't integrate how people view, value, and interact with oceans,” Micheli said. “The human relationship with oceans is a huge driver of change and solutions that is largely left out of the equation.”

Diving deeper into a broad subject

While the United Nations has outlined ocean literacy principles for grades K-12, there is nothing yet developed for higher education. Cohen and Micheli noted that the field has primarily existed in research conversations, but they plan to broaden that discussion to the classroom.

A future oceanic humanities curriculum could include a class in the economic, geopolitical, and juridical uses of the oceans. Another course could focus on ocean voyagers – for example, merchants, pirates, fisherfolk, enslaved people, and forced migrants. Yet another class would investigate the deep history of the oceans, including Indigenous knowledge, ship logbooks, and shipwrecks.

These are just a few examples of ideas for courses and lines of inquiry, and the team plans to incorporate the approaches of a range of disciplines such as literature, history, geography, philosophy, and performance and visual studies, as well as science and technology.

“We have a robust group of people who are interested in the oceans at Stanford,” Cohen said. “We have the Center for Ocean Solutions and the oldest marine station on the U.S. West Coast at Hopkins Marine Station, and now the new Oceans Department. The California coast and the Bay Area are incredibly rich in both the culture and science of the ocean environment. And Stanford's a place that really appreciates and fosters interdisciplinarity.”