Is capitalism the best economic system for meeting human needs? Can microeconomic theory help us figure out what to do about climate change? Will macroeconomic theory get us out of the recession? In this course, we will use these questions to frame the study of our economic system and the theories most often used to explain its workings. In the first part of the class, we will assess the merits and problems of capitalism as a system for producing and distributing goods and services.

As recently as 250 years ago the world had a roughly equal level of development. today, the richest country in the world has an average income level around 400 times that of the poorest. What are the reasons behind this divergence? How have the 'poor' countries attempted to reverse the gap and how have these attempts transformed societies within those countries? the course examines these general themes and consists of two components: first, we will survey contemporary debates in development economics, including such topics as development ethics (e.g., what is development?

Utilizing an interdisciplinary framework, this course will examine Latin@ communities in the United States, focusing on their historical, social, political and economic formations and practices. Drawing also from an Ethnic Studies perspective, we will examine what constitutes Latina/o Studies, what its intellectual goals are, and unravel its overlapping, yet distinguishing mission with Latin American area studies.

During the Great Depression, misery was visible. People lined up for soup, furniture of recently evicted tenants cluttered the streets and unemployed workers rode the rails. Today, poverty seems to be less visible. We hear about foreclosures and evictions through statistical rundowns on the nightly news, but are rarely confronted with images. When we compare the Great Depression and the current recession, many questions emerge. Why did people take to the streets during the Great Depression?

This course immerses students in a creative process of hearing, interpreting and performing voices from the past. The voices are of ordinary people, describing their extra-ordinary experiences of living through the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947. Through a combination of creativity and historical inquiry, students explore what it means to 'hear' a voice from a different culture and time.

Rivers have become sites of contention surrounding how they can best serve the people living along them and the nations through which they flow. For some, they provide cultural meanings and livelihoods; for others, they represent progress in the ways they can be developed and used. We will critically examine several case studies of rivers to unpack the cultural, environmental, economic, and identity conflicts that arise worldwide as people's concepts of rivers collide.

This two-semester course is of interest to all Div II students who seek to incorporate a historical perspective to their work. It will cover a wide range of topics and recent methodologies such as transnational identities, immigration/migration, race and ethnicity, women's history, early modern science, visual culture, sex and the body, gender and the law. The readings will be located in Renaissance Europe, the early modern Mediterranean, the Black Atlantic, and Contemporary America/Transnational Sites.

How do we understand childhoods as temporary states of being, and childhood itself as a temporal construct? How does time play a role across children's lives? How does the range of children's ideas about and experiences of time differ from adults' ideas about and experiences of time? How might children imagine time in relation to themselves? In this course we explore time and temporality as a window onto children's self-experiences and adults' ideas about children and childhood.

The U.S.-Mexico border has been described as a "thin edge of barbwire...where the Third World grates against the First and bleeds." Nowhere else in the world is there such physical proximity of a post-industrial nation and a developing one. While capital, goods and managerial personnel freely cross the border under NAFTA, the Mexican worker is the target of conflicting policies aimed at securitizing the border and disciplining labor on both sides.

It is fashionable today to speak of "sustainability," but how do we understand the term in its broadest sense? Historic preservation plays a key role in researching our history, building civic identity, and creating sustainable communities. Once associated primarily with saving the elegant buildings of the elite, historic preservation today involves vernacular as well as distinguished architecture, landscapes as well as the built environment, and the stories of all social groups. Preservation and adaptive reuse of old buildings play a key role in both economic and environmental policy.