To learn where humans fit into nature, students at the University of California, Davis, can sign up for a new and unusual interdisciplinary major focusing on the interaction of people and the natural world. Students might study, for example, how people around the world historically depicted themselves and nature through art or organized botanical classification systems. The new Nature and Culture major "attempts to bridge the ever-expanding chasm between science and the humanities and, at the same time, provide the nation with citizens who are able to understand and respond to ecological issues of ever-increasing complexity," says David Robertson, a UC Davis English professor who helped establish the program. Combining science and humanities in this way, the new major offers students exposure to both first-rate science and deeply reflective humanistic studies. This approach unites branches of learning that are usually separate, and may redefine them for students. The major, with a curriculum based in the natural sciences and in literary studies, encourages students to utilize a broad range of perspectives in a quest for the fullest understanding of the relationships between people and nature. The framework for the major is provided by core courses that are team-taught, with one instructor from the humanities and one from the sciences, in which students explore how different academic disciplines both converge and conflict in the attempt to explain the world. For example, in one core course, students might learn that artists in Imperial China painted mountains and waterfalls as dominant and people secondary, while early modern European painters put people out front and made nature the background. In another core course, a field study, students spend eight days in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada involved in hands-on research into questions about land management, cultural history and natural resources; they return to campus and pursue related topics for in-depth research papers. In addition, students take required classes in chemistry, biology, comparative literature and choose from courses in environmental studies, zoology, botany, anthropology, American studies, history, Native American studies and English and other electives. Students who choose to major in Nature and Culture will acquire a broad undergraduate education in liberal arts and sciences, which will prepare them for professional schools or provide them with a foundation for such career areas as landscape design, land-use planning and environmental journalism. The major, initially offered this fall, is believed by program directors to be the first of its kind in the country and appears to be part of a trend toward undergraduate interdisciplinary studies of the environment and humanities. Such programs "may be the major of the 21st century," Robertson says, based on what he has heard from evaluators of the grant that provided initial support for the development of the program. The grant, $206,867 from the Fund for the Improvement of Post Secondary Education, provides support for the first three years of the major. The major was created by a group of UC Davis faculty members, including Robertson; Lenora Timm, a linguistics professor who is serving as program director for the 1994-95 academic year; Gary Snyder, an English professor and Pulitzer Prize-winning poet; Mark Wheelis, a microbiology lecturer; and Scott McLean, a comparative literature lecturer.