Independent reading course.

Fall and spring semesters. The Department.

Environmentalists are divided between those who believe there must be a fundamental change in our values and our devotion to the market and those who believe our values and the market offer the best hope for achieving sound environmental policy.  If we are to achieve sustainable management of natural resources, is it necessary that we first transform ourselves and the basis of our social organization or do we already possess the tools to accomplish the task, in which case fundamental transformations might actually make things worse?

(Offered as HIST 402 [^c] and ENST 401.) Wine is as old as Western civilization. Its consumption is deeply wedded to leading religious and secular traditions around the world. Its production has transformed landscapes, ecosystems, and economies. In this course we examine how wine has shaped the history of Europe, North Africa, and the Americas.

What we know and how we know about "the environment" is influenced by cultural, political, historical and social contexts.  Why are some knowledges about the environment perceived to be more accurate, objective and true than others?  How might our collective understandings of environmental change shift if multiple forms of knowledge--"western" scientific, indigenous, etc.--were mobilized in the production, dissemination and application of environmental knowledge?

Our global environment as a subject of concern has emerged in recent decades with the rise of scientific and media attention to the ways ecological issues like climate change and biodiversity loss matter in the daily lives of global citizens. But are all “global environmental citizens” equally responsible for and influenced by what are currently considered global environmental challenges?  Why is it that some forms of nature are considered global while others are resolutely local?

(Offered as PHIL 225 and ENST 228) As our impact on the environment shows itself in increasingly dramatic ways, our interaction with the environment has become an important topic of cultural and political debate. In this course we will discuss various philosophical issues that arise in such debates, including: What obligations, if any, do we have to future generations, to non-human animals, and to entire ecosystems? How should we act when we are uncertain exactly how our actions will affect the environment? How should we go about determining environmental policy?

(Offered as HIST 104 [^C] and ENST 220.)  This course considers the ways that people in various parts of the world thought about and acted upon nature during the nineteenth century. We look historically at issues that continue to have relevance today, including: invasive species, deforestation, soil-nitrogen availability, water use, desertification, and air pollution.

Life has existed on Earth for nearly four billion years, shaped by massive extinction events. In the short span of the last 10,000 years, humans have become important agents in shaping global environmental change. The question this course considers is straightforward: Have humans been modifying the environment in ways that will, in the not distant future, cause another worldwide extinction event? There are no simple, much less uncontested, answers to this question. We will have to consider the ways we have altered habitats and ecosystem processes.