Winter 2020 Class Schedule: Program in Environmental Policy and Culture

Winter 2020 Class Schedule

Course	Title	Instructor	Lecture	Department
ENVR_POL 309	American Environmental History	Woodhouse	MW 12:30-1:50	Environmental Policy & Culture
ENVR_POL 309 American Environmental History This course will survey American history from the colonial era to the present with two premises in mind: that the natural world is not simply a passive background to human history but rather an active participant, and that human attitudes toward nature are both shaped by and in turn shape social, political, and economic behavior. The course will cover formal schools of thought about the natural world - from transcendentalism to the conservation and environmental movements - but also discuss the many informal intersections of human activity and natural systems, from European colonialism to property regimes, migration and transportation, industry, consumer practices, war, technological innovation, political ideology, and food production. Taught with History 309; students may not receive credit for both courses.
Bio coming soon
ENVR_POL 390-20	Special Topics in Environmental Policy & Culture: Fire and Blood: Resources, Energy and Society	Oguz	MW 2:00 - 3:20	Environmental Policy & Culture
ENVR_POL 390-20 Special Topics in Environmental Policy & Culture: Fire and Blood: Resources, Energy and Society Climate crisis, directly linked to CO₂ emissions from centuries of burning fossil fuels, has brought energy resources to the center of public attention. This course will survey works of anthropology, history, and geography as well as films and novels to understand how various resources and energy systems relate to sociocultural practices and politics throughout the world. Focusing on one energy resource each week, Fire and Blood will examine how uranium, wind, coal, light, oil, water, and other materials are made into sources of power—both physical and political. It will trace the movement of resources from the subsoil, atmosphere, or riverbeds to pipelines, power plants, dams, turbines, or other kinds of energy infrastructures; and finally, to the electrified streets of urban Mumbai, the wastelands of Navajo County, or the melting ice sheets of the Arctic.
Bio coming soon
ENVR_POL 390-21	Special Topics in Environmental Policy & Culture: Int'l Environmental Law and Policy	Burns	TTH 11-12:20	Environmental Policy & Culture
ENVR_POL 390-21 Special Topics in Environmental Policy & Culture: Int'l Environmental Law and Policy Global environmental problems, including the looming threat of climate change, the biodiversity crisis, and increasing pressures on ocean ecosystems due to human activities, have become pressing concerns in recent decades. In response, a sophisticated structure of global governance has emerged, including through the establishment of hundreds of multi-lateral treaties to confront these threats. As a consequence, nation-States have begun to cooperate with each other to an unprecedented extent, although not without facing significant obstacles, and not without domestic political agendas sometimes delaying or thwarting progress at the international level. This class examines the array of legal regimes, politics, governance processes and policy tools that have emerged in the arena of global environmental law and politics. We will focus on a number of different discrete international environmental problems, as well as how international environmental law is formulated and enforced at the international level.
Bio coming soon
ENVR_POL 390-22	Special Topics in Environmental Policy & Culture: Climate Change Law and Policy	Burns	TTH 2-3:20	Environmental Policy & Culture
ENVR_POL 390-22 Special Topics in Environmental Policy & Culture: Climate Change Law and Policy Climate change is the keystone environmental issue of this generation, and most likely for many generations to come. It now appears inevitable that temperatures will increase this century by more than 2ºC, and perhaps by substantially more than 3ºC, with the inertia of the system ensuring that temperatures will continue to increase for centuries thereafter even under scenarios of total decarbonization. This will have serious ramifications for both human institutions and natural ecosystems. This course examines the potential role of the law in confronting climate change from an institutional and policy perspective, examining the role of treaties, national legislation, sub-national responses and judicial and quasi-judicial fora. It will also seek to help students develop critical skills of analysis, public speaking and writing.
Bio coming soon
ENVR_POL 390-23	Special Topics in Environmental Policy & Culture: Maple Syrup and Climate Change	Suzukovich	F 12:00- 3:00	Environmental Policy & Culture
ENVR_POL 390-23 Special Topics in Environmental Policy & Culture: Maple Syrup and Climate Change Sesipâskw’pêskân is the Nehiywa (Cree) word for a maple sugar camp. It’s the time in between late winter and early spring when families gather to collect maple sap, and to harvest fish, beavers, and early spring plants, or at least it used to be. As the earth’s climate changes, maple trees and the subsequent maple syrup industry in the U.S. and Canada are being affected, in both good and bad ways. To compound this, the demand for maple syrup is rising in Asia. The class will cover these effects, their impact on Native American and non-Native communities, the maple syrup industry, and maple species themselves.
Bio coming soon
ENVR_POL 390-24	Special Topics in Environmental Policy & Culture: Food and Immigration	Buscañan-Wiley	MW 3:30-4:50	Environmental Policy & Culture
ENVR_POL 390-24 Special Topics in Environmental Policy & Culture: Food and Immigration You have probably heard the saying, “you are what you eat.” This class argues that you are also where you eat. Immigration deeply shapes culinary practices and global food systems are often dependent upon migrant labor. This course explores what cuisine and movement can teach us about belonging within local and global communities by addressing questions such as: How do foodways and migratory trajectories influence individual and collective identities? What political, social, and economic activities shape food distribution and day-to-day eating customs? We will cover food-related topics such as labor, transnationalism, the environment, memory, authenticity, gender and much more. Class discussions will span historical and contemporary developments that gave rise to our modern industrial food system while focusing in particular on food culture and migration narratives.
Bio coming soon
ENVR_POL 390-25	Special Topics in Environmental Policy & Culture: Tales of Oil and Water	Wolff	TTH 2:00-3:20	Environmental Policy & Culture
ENVR_POL 390-25 Special Topics in Environmental Policy & Culture: Tales of Oil and Water What can a dystopian film like 2015's Mad Max: Fury Road tell us about how to change our actions, today? How can we recognize urgent questions from our own world in such a surreal cinematic assault on the senses? How do such imaginary prophecies of near-future worlds "memorialize" the present? As interlocking narratives of globalization, resource competition, and ecological crisis collide in the news, the natural resources on which human lives and social relationships depend have increasingly preoccupied recent fiction, film, and criticism. Whether it's a question of too much; or not enough; of deluge or scarcity; the tales we will read and watch together in this course depict resource wars and dystopian imaginaries through everyday, intimate events and encounters. Our discussions of essays, novels, stories and films will be guided by how each represents pressing problems of compromise and control, agency and activism, competition and coexistence, in a "now" viewed as the future's past.
Bio coming soon