What makes a disaster a disaster? In this course, we will explore this question through an environmental and social lens. We will survey a variety of disasters, both past and present, from earthquakes to fires to plagues to hurricanes. With each, we will explore the evolution of the disaster, its causes, consequences, and aftermath. We will compare responses to various disasters across both time and space, showing how different variables affect the severity of each crisis.

Ecosystem ecology provides a framework for understanding the organization and function of the biosphere and insights into the critical environmental issues of our time. Through lecture, discussion, and collaborative work, we explore interactions between organisms and the environment from the molecular to the global scale.

(Offered as ENST 292 and HIST 292) This class will take a historical and comparative approach to the topic of

The effects of environmental problems, from climate change, to water contamination, to the depletion of fisheries, are felt acutely at the local level. But their underlying causes are often global: coal-burning power plants in China affects sea-level rise near Miami, overfishing by European fleets off the coast of Africa affects bush meat hunting in the Congo Basin, and deforestation in Indonesia creates forest fires that affect all of Southeast Asia’s air quality.

Global climate change is one of the defining issues of our time, transforming both Earth systems and human
societies. Finding solutions to the challenges it poses requires an integrated, systems-based perspective that
incorporates biological, physical, and social dimensions to guide action. This course explores the causes and
consequences of climate change and evaluates strategies for mitigation and adaptation. Through lecture, discussion,
and project work, we will critically assess scientific evidence and recent advances, while emphasizing the role of

(Offered as ENGL 488 and FAMS 447) The Advanced Screenwriting Workshop is designed for advanced English and FAMS majors working in film. The workshop is designed to serve as a resource for serious film students interested in developing an existing idea or script-in-progress, with the goal of writing and revising a 20- to 30-page screenplay (or completing a project-in-progress) by the end of the semester. This maximum page limit can mean drafting and revising a series episode, a script for a short film, or one act of a feature.

(Offered as ENGL 484 and FAMS 424) Sometimes referred to as the “silver era” of US film production, the 1970s were a period of aesthetic, technological, and cultural transformation. New “auteurs” emerged as both mavericks and commercial success stories. Independence reigned supreme for some, while others helped to usher in the contemporary blockbuster. At the same time, scholarly study of film was steadily increasing, experimenting with new disciplinary methods, waging debates, and often distancing itself from popular critical writings.

In this seminar, we will read and study living writers who build on the antiracist feminist tradition of This Bridge Called My Back: Radical Writings by Women of Color, the groundbreaking 1981 anthology that remains urgent in its call for intersectional analysis, coalition-building between U.S. and international freedom struggles, and “theory from the flesh.” How are contemporary WOC writers reflecting that legacy in literature and theory written in and for the present moment?

(Offered as ENGL 474 and AAPI 474) This seminar  draws on transpacific literatures and methods to examine the relationship between narrative and ecology. “Ecology” as a field of scientific study concerns the “relationships between people, social groups, and their environment” (OED). Throughout the course, we will draw on transpacific frameworks to reflect on how the transits of people, and the circulation of ideas, capital, and materials structures impact ecologies and the relationships between people, communities, and non-human lives.

(Before 1800) Can reading poetry change our understanding of our environment? How might the way we perceive nature be conditioned by the ways in which writers from other time periods have imagined it? In turn, how might the way that we perceive our own imaginations be conditioned by ideas about the natural world? Although “nature” might seem like a universal and unchanging concept, British Romantic writers did much to invent our modern ideas about it. Notions of perception, cognition, and the imagination changed alongside our ideas about nature.