Spring 2011

ANTH 127, Hunters and Gatherers

What do Pygmies, Aborigines, and Eskimos have in common? What is the relationship between nature and culture in these simple societies? These questions and others will be examined through case studies and cross-cultural comparisons.

ANTH 130C, Global Food Systems and Human Food Security

Examines history of global food systems and its impacts on ecosystems, ecologies, and human nutrition and food security. How agricultural, capture fisheries, and aquacultural industries were integrated into the global food system. Provides information to make more informed decisions about consuming these products.

ANTH 139, Indigenous Peoples

Survey of indigenous societies, including: resistance, response, and adaptations to colonial incursions; colonial and postcolonial politics; ethnic and cultural assimilation; indigenous ethnic resistance; indigenous political movements. Other topics explored include ethnocide and ecocide; indigenous property rights; effects of globalization.

ANTH 155, Prehistory of California and the Great Basin

A survey of the prehistory of California and the Great Basin, which includes principally the states of Nevada and Utah. Consideration is also given to how archaeologists construct regional cultural developments and attempt to explain prehistoric cultural change.

ANTH 169, Small-Scale Food Production

Biological, ecological, social, and economic principles of small-scale food production and their practical applications. Includes each student cultivating a garden plot; lab exercises, field trips to local farms and gardens.

BL ST 129, The Urban Dilemma

Examines the evolution of African American urban communities. Focuses on theoretical and historiographical debates: social organization; conditions; daily life; culture; social movements; sustainable development; and class, gender, race relations. Analysis of current policy debates and community initiatives.

EACS 130, Tourism in East Asia

Surveys the historical, cultural, and economic significance of tourists destinations in South Korea, China, and Japan. Using case studies ranging from temples, museums, monuments and theme parks, course analyzes how selected “images/myths” of East Asia have been invented, manipulated, and propagated in the commodification of culture and heritage.

ECON 115, Environmental Economics

Course provides a rigorous treatment of environment economics. Topics include welfare analysis, ethical dimensions of economic criteria for protecting the environment, measuring the demand for environmental goods, property rights, economic incentives, including marketable permits and emission fees, and regulating risk.

ENGL 122AP, Cultural Representations: Literature and the Environment: Imagining Asia and the Pacific

This course explores the environment as a site of imagination via the works of literary writers and filmmakers who have tried to take their readers beneath the seas, over the ice sheets, across islands and continents and beyond into space. We will read an international selection of environmental texts and films from Asia and the Pacific, focusing on the genres of science fiction and fantasy. How did “environmental crisis” become a way in which to understand and live in the contemporary world, and imagine pasts and futures? What narrative strategies do literary (and other) texts use to orient us towards struggles over scientific abilities to make and re-make life? How do they position us towards conflicts over the meanings and uses of water or of butterflies and their rainforests? What might these texts tell us about how the planet looks from different perspectives around the world? Through readings and discussions, students will engage with the basic histories, critical terms, and debates surrounding the study of environment in literary studies and the humanities.

ENGL 122CD, Cultural Representations: California Dreaming: So, SoCal

Based in the narrative study of the regions of southern California, this course explores the dream and the nightmare of Southern California in relation not just to Northern California, but also to the rest of the nation. Texts include nature writing, essays, novels, short stories, poems, films, paintings, and songs. Subjects include: historical and cultural origins, migration and immigration, real estate and water, urban noir, youth culture as well as science fiction and ecological confrontations. The class will read works by Austin, Steinbeck, Chandler, Mosely, Didion, Dick, Morales, and Rechy. The required films include: The Big Sleep, Slippery when Wet, Gidget, The Birds, and Blade Runner.

ENGL 165EM, Topics in Literature: What Else is Pastoral?

Of all the different ways of writing, pastoral may be the most versatile–and most misunderstood and overlooked. Pastoral can be lighthearted fun (as in Shakespeare’s As You Like It, which we will be reading), scathing, subversive, and dangerous political allegory (as it was for poet Edmund Spenser), astonishingly beautiful nature writing (such as the description of Eden in Milton’s Paradise Lost), or any number of other forms. In fact, pastoral can take nearly any shape: a play, a lyric poem, an epic, a novel, or even a film. In this course we will be tracing this remarkable mode of writing from its earliest beginnings to its height in the Renaissance and 18th century, while also considering how it is still very much at work in the world today.

ENGL 197, Upper-Division Seminar: Indigenous Literature

This course cannot be repeated and is limited to upper-division English majors only.
From the cannibals, noble savages, and “vanishing races” imagined by European explorers of the new world, to visions of native peoples as utopian communitarian leftists or casino capitalists, writers and filmmakers have relentlessly imagined, and fantasized about, indigenous peoples. Ironically, their works have often marginalized the people that they purport to represent. This course will centralize creative works (novels, poetry, film, short stories) by indigenous peoples, and consider alternative approaches to storytelling, history, and politics. Along the way, we will be exploring topics of indigeneity; authenticity and heritage; memory and history; urban life and ecology; and comparative research methodologies. Through readings and discussions, students will engage with the basic histories, critical terms, and debates surrounding indigeneity as a mode of belonging. We will read works by writers from Australia, Aotearoa/ New Zealand, the United States, and Canada, including Melissa Lukashenko, Patricia Grace, Louise Erdrich, and Sherman Alexie. We will also examine a number of other media, from paintings to photographs to films.

ENV S 3, Introduction to the Social and Cultural Environment

An introduction to the relationship of societies and the environment from prehistorical times to the present. The course is global in perspective, and includes history, literature, philosophy, economics, science, and culture as evidence for examining the human social environment.

ENV S 117, Science and Policy: Dimensions of Climate Change

Climate change and variability due to global warming is a critical environmental, social, and economical issue. Course will review the scientific basis of our understanding of climate change and policy responses to the problem including “no regrets” and multiple-benefit responses.

ENV S 125B, Land Use and Planning Law

An examination of local, state, and federal laws regulating land use and development. Selected problems analyzed through case studies.

ENV S 130C, Global Food Systems and Human Food Security

Examines history of global food system and its impacts on ecosystems, ecologies, and human nutrition and food security. How agricultural, capture fisheries, and aquacultural industries were integrated into the global food system. Provides information to make more informed decisions about consuming these products.

ENV S 135B, Advanced Environmental Planning

Advanced seminar applying principles presented in environmental studies 135A to regional and local government planning processes. Field analysis of local planning issues.

ENV S 166FP, Small-Scale Food Production

Biological, ecological, social, and economic principles of small-scale food production and their practical applications. Includes each student cultivating a garden plot; lab exercises, field trips to local farms and gardens.

ENV S 175, Environmental Economics

Course provides a rigorous treatment of environmental economics. Topics include welfare analysis, ethical dimensions of economic criteria for protecting the environment, measuring the demand for environmental goods, property rights, economic incentives, including marketable permits and emission fees, and regulating risk.

ENV S 176A, Water Policy in the West: Linking Science with Environmental and Economic Values

Examines water supply and use, the science of water systems and watersheds, key concepts in water policy, and the basics of water law as a fundamental element of the history and context for water policy in the West.

ENV S 184, Gender and the Environment

A philosophical, evolutionary, and cross-cultural analysis of the ways women and men may relate differently to their environment resulting in the design of gender-sensitive and sustainable policies for planning and development in both the developing and the developed world.

ENV S 189, Religion And Ecology In The Americas

An overview of the growing field of religion and ecology in the Americas. Focus on spiritual traditions and landbased knowledge indigenous to the Western hemisphere.

GEOG 5, People, Place, and Environment

Survey of spatial differentiation and organization of human activity and interaction with the Earth’s biophysical systems. Sample topics include human spatial decision-making behavior, migration, population growth, economic development, industrial location, urbanization, and human impacts on the natural environment.

GEOG 153C, Environmental Perception and Cognition

Research and theory on human perception and cognition of environments. Topics include spatial perception, spatial learning, knowledge structures, navigation and wayfinding, language and spatial cognition, map use, the spatial skills of special populations, and other issues.

GEOG 171FP, Small-Scale Food Production

Biological, ecological, social, and economic principles of small-scale food production and their practical applications. Includes each student cultivating a garden plot; lab exercises, field trips to local farms and gardens.

GLOBL 161, Global Environmental Policy and Politics

The evolution of international environmental negotiations, agreements, and organizations, and the role governmental and non-governmental actors are playing in shaping them are examined. Climate change, biodiversity conservation, and equitable global sustainable development are among the critical policy challenges considered.

POL S 177, Comparative Environmental Politics

Course is structured around the major issues in environmental politics, for example: global warming, nuclear waste, deforestation, and chemical pollution. The roles of economics, technology and social organization are each considered as explanatory variables for understanding environmental problems.

RG ST 193, Religion and Ecology in the Americas

An overview of the growing field of religion and ecology in the Americas. Focus on spiritual traditions and landbased knowledge indigenous to the western hemisphere.

SOC 134G, Green Movements and Green Parties

Examines how environmental organizations and green political parties are shaping policy formulation on environmental issues in different developed and developing countries, with a focus on the US experience.

WRIT 109ES, Writing for Environmental Studies

Analysis and practice of various forms of writing for environmental studies, both academic and professional. Attention to research methods, design of papers, development of graphics, stylistic clarity, and editing strategies.

Winter 2011

ANTH 130B, Global Tourism and Environmental Conservation

Focus on the contradictions between international tourism as an economic development strategy and environmental conservation efforts, especially in an era of climate change. One major objective is to help students make more informed decisions about their own tourist experiences.

ANTH 148, Ecological Anthropology

Focuses on the complex and dynamic interactions between human beings and their physical environment. Examines ecological thinking in anthropology and the various theoretical approaches within the discipline that have developed from the coalescence of natural and social sciences.

ANTH 162, Prehistoric Food Production

A history of the process of plant and animal domestication in the Americas, the Near East, Asia, and Africa. Course focuses on the specific biological changes in the major domesticates as well as associated social changes in human life.

ARTHI 121A, American Art from Revolution to Civil War: 1700-1860

Painting, sculpture, architecture and decorative arts in the original 13 colonies, through the formation of the United States, to the crisis of the Civil War. Particular attention paid to environmental and social issues.

ARTHI 136O, Sustainable Architecture: History and Aesthetics

Course examines history and theory of sustainable and “green” architecture since the early twentieth century. Emphasis is placed on the critical analysis of a distinct “green” architectural aesthetic; the scope is global.

ARTHI 136X, Culture of Architecture: Perception and Analysis of the Built Environment

Introduces the student to a first-hand experience of the built-environment through perception and analysis of design; understanding historical, theoretical, technical and artistic structures that shape and sustain the culture of architecture.

ENGL 122NE, Cultural Representations: Nature and the Environment

Perceptions of nature have changed throughout history and vary across cultures. Course explores changing expressions of our changing relations to the world we live in, with emphasis on cultural movements (films, literature, newspapers, etc.) that have affected contemporary American experience.

ENV S 122NE, Cultural Representations: Nature and the Environment

Perceptions of nature have changed throughout history and vary across cultures. Course explores changing expressions of our changing relations to the world we live in, with emphasis on cultural movements (films, literature, newspapers, etc.) that have affected contemporary American experience.

ENV S 125A, Principles of Environmental Law

An introduction to the history and methodology of law as it relates to human use of the environment. Case studies are used to examine common law, constitutional and modern environmental laws, with an emphasis on current theories and principles.

ENV S 129, Ecopsychology

Course explores the theories and practices of psychologists, educators, and others whose work is focused on the connections between “inner” human nature and “outer” nature within which humans experience themselves and the rest of the world.

ENV S 130B, Global Tourism and Environmental Conservation

Focus on the contradictions between international tourism as an economic development strategy and environmental conservation efforts, especially in an era of climate change. One major objective is to help students make more informed decisions about their own tourist experiences.

ENV S 135A, Principles of Environmental Planning

Introduction to the history, theory, and trends of urban, regional, and environmental planning in both California and the United States. Field trips to local urban areas.

ENV S 179, Natural Resource Economics

Theory and capital theory applied to problems of conservation and management of natural resources. Analysis of public policy with special emphasis on nonrenewable resources, management of forests, deforestation and species extinction, and use of fish and game resources.

ENV S 188, The Ethics of Human-Environment Relations

Survey of contemporary environmental ethics, focusing on both philosophical and applied issues. Topics include anthropocentrism and its alternatives, the role of science and aesthetics, multicultural perspectives and the problem of relativism, and the conflict between radical and reformist environmentalism.

GEOG 7, Energy, Water, and Climate

Oil and water are two key strategic resources dominating the international scene. This class provides an overview of global distributions of oil and water resources and analyzes some of the social, economic, and geopolitical ramifications of these distributions.

GEOG 141A, Population Geography

Various geographic dimensions of human population dynamics: fertility, mortality, and migration. The concepts and language of demography are introduced. The causes and consequences of population dynamics are investigated, including links among population, environment, and development.

RG ST 185, Food, Religion, and Culture in the Middle East

Explores the significance of foods in the religious and cultural life of Middle Eastern peoples. Focuses on Jewish, Christian, and Muslim feasting, fasting, and dietary rules. Includes culinary traditions of Arab, Persian, Turkish, and Israeli ethnic groups, and related topics.

SOC 105E, Environmental Sociology

Traces the history of environmentalism and applies social science theories, concepts, and methods to analyze critical contemporary environmental issues and societal responses to them.

WRIT 109ES, Writing for Environmental Studies

Analysis and practice of various forms of writing for environmental studies, both academic and professional. Attention to research methods, design of papers, development of graphics, stylistic clarity, and editing strategies.

Fall 2010

ANTH 110, Technology and Culture

Theories of technological evolution and innovation. Meanings of technology. The social and cultural impact of technology on our everyday lives, including automobile culture, industrial farming, the telephone, and technologies of the body.

ANTH 129MG, Behavioral Ecology of Hunter Gatherers

A thorough introduction using a behavioral ecology approach to the diversity of behaviors found among foragers in Africa, South America, Southeast Asia, and Australia. Topics include: diet and subsistence, mating, demography, social behavior, mobility and settlement patterns, gender, indigenous rights, and conservation.

ANTH 130A, Coupled Human and Natural Systems: Risks, Vulnerability, Resilience, and Disasters

Examines human dimensions of global environmental change in developing countries from an interdisciplinary social science perspective. Compares and contrasts alternative conceptual and analytical models of dynamic, interrelated human-environmental systems and presents recent approaches to understanding risk, vulnerability, resilience, and disasters.

ANTH 149, World Agriculture, Food, and Population

Evolution, current status, and alternative futures of agriculture, food, and population worldwide. Achieving environmentally, socially, and economically sustainable food systems; soil, water, crops, energy, and labor; diversity, stability, and ecosystems management; farmer and scientist knowledge and collaboration; common property management.

ARTHI 5A, Introduction to Architecture and Environment

Examines the history of the built and natural environments as interrelated phenomena, and explores how human beings have positioned them architecturally in relation to the natural world at various cultural moments.

ARTHI 134E, The Art of the Chinese Landscape

Chinese approaches to landscape as subject matter in art, with a focus on painting and garden architecture. The course begins with the immortality cult in the Han Dynasty (206 B.C.-A.D.221) and ends with contemporary artists of the twentieth century.

ENGL 122CS, Cityscapes: Globalism & Urban Cultures

This seminar examines different representations of the modern metropolis from the 19th to the 21st century, by turning to literature, cinema, and urban theory. The city and urban life crucially shaped the experience of modernity. From fin de siècle Paris to 1920s Berlin, to mid-twentieth century Algiers to contemporary London, New York, Dubai, and L.A., we will study urban space in the work of Edgar Allan Poe, Emile Zola, J.G. Ballard, Hanif Kureishi, Buchi Emecheta, Roland Barthes and Georges Perec, together with current critiques of urbanism (David Harveym Rem Koolhaas, Mike davis, Henri Lefebvre, Jean Baudrillard, Guy Debord). Topics for discussion will include: the crowd, walking in the city, looking and the spectacle of consumption, shopping, public vs. corporate space, women in the city, colonialism, the multicultural city, and the immigrant experience. Films: Berlin Symphony of a City, Playtime (1967), The Battle of Algiers, Unknown Code, and The Matrix.

ENGL 122LE, Cultural Representations: Introduction to Literature and the Environment

Environmental survey of Western literature that explores the often-ignored literary history of the natural world.

ENGL 122WE, Cultural Representations: Water Imaginations

A study of literary works, paintings, films, and other representational forms as they influence cultural attitudes. The courses offered will focus on such topics as the body, the city, the everyday, the marketplace, and the machine.

ENV S 1, Introduction to Environmental Studies

“Environmental Studies” requires insights from many disciplines, including the social as well as biophysical science and the humanities. This introduction offers an overview of the field, examining both our planet and the ways in which we humans depend on it.

ENV S 116, Building Sustainable Communities

Examines sustainability, communities, and urban systems in a global context. Covers impacts cities have on the environmental systems that support them, and explores ways to improve urban systems through technology, policy, and design.

ENV S 122LE, Cultural Representations: Introduction to Literature and the Environment

Environmental survey of Western literature that explores the often-ignored literary history of the natural world.

ENV S 130A, Coupled Human and Natural Systems: Risks, Vulnerability, Resilience, and Disasters

Examines human dimensions of global environmental change in developing countries from an interdisciplinary social science perspective. Compares and contrasts alternative conceptual and analytical models of dynamic, interrelated human-environmental systems and presents recent approaches to understanding risk, vulnerability, resilience, and disasters.

ENV S 131, International Environmental Law and Politics

An examination of the actors and institutions of international environmental law and politics, with an emphasis on explaining patterns of success and failure in addressing global environmental problems.

ENV S 149, World Agriculture, Food, and Population

Evolution, current status, and alternative futures of agriculture, food and population worldwide. Achieving environmentally, socially, and economically sustainable food systems; soil, water, crops, energy and labor; diversity, stability and ecosystems management; farmer and scientist knowledge and collaboration; common property management.

ENV S 172, Integrated Materials and Waste Management

Addresses how waste has been regarded and managed through the ages to the present. Emphasis on the technological, policy, and economic dimensions of modern materials and waste management, such as landfill, conservation technologies, waste reduction, recycling and composting.

ENV S 173, American Environmental History

Traces the history of American attitudes and behavior toward nature. Focus on wilderness, the conservation movement, and modern forms of environmentalism.

ENV S 178, Politics of the Environment

Analysis of environmental policy issues and their treatment in the political process. Discussion of the interplay of substantive issues, ideology, institutions, and private groups in the development, management, protection, and preservation of natural resources and the natural environment.

ENV S 184, Gender and the Environment

A philosophical, evolutionary, and cross-cultural analysis of the ways women and men may relate differently to their environment resulting in the design of gender-sensitive and sustainable policies for planning and development in both the developing and the developed world.

GEOG 5, People, Place and Environment

Survey of spatial differentiation and organization of human activity and human interaction with the Earth’s biophysical systems. Sample topics include human spatial decision-making behavior, migration, population growth, economic development, industrial location, urbanization, and human impacts on the natural environment.

GEOG 161, World Agriculture, Food, and Population

Evolution, current status, and alternative futures of agriculture, food and population worldwide. Achieving environmentally, socially, and economically sustainable food systems; soil, water, crops, energy and labor; diversity, stability and ecosystems management; farmer and scientist knowledge and collaboration; common property management.

GEOG 182, Global Cities in the Information Age

Study of the economic, social, and political networks that link together cities of global importance. Specializations and roles of global cities in the information age economy. Examination of individual cities at the top tiers of the global urban hierarchy.

FLMST 183, Films of the Natural and Human Environment

Course presents a series of popular films and professional documentaries representing a range of trends, images, and issues associated with the natural and human environments. Visual images and critical thinking skills are combined to enhance understanding of environmental issues presented by the media.

HIST 109, Science and Technology in America

Science and technology in American intellectual, cultural, religious, and political life with focus on 19th/20th centuries. Examples include rise of scientific enterprise and infrastructure; technology and America’s economic growth; American research styles; science and the military; space program; environmentalism; biotechnology.

HIST 173T, American Environmental History

Traces the history of American attitudes and behavior toward nature. Focus on wilderness, the conservation movement, and modern forms of environmentalism.

LIT CS 102, Writing Natural History

This two-part historical literature and writing course will encourage students to engage with the genre of natural history, which aims to represent the origins and functions of organisms or places. Students will learn about the history of the genre first, then write their own natural history of an organism or location near UCSB.

In the first part of the class, students will read important natural history writings, including Pliny the Elder’s Natural History, John Muir’s selected essays, and Charles Darwin’s Voyage of the Beagle. They will learn about the political and commercial ramifications of natural history, as well as its aesthetic, inspiring qualities. The first half of the class will encourage students to understand the history of natural history, so that they may proceed securely to their own studies.

During the second half of the class, students will write their own natural histories, using information they have gathered throughout the quarter. Students choose an organism or location to observe, and write their own natural history of it, taking their inspiration from the writers we have read in class, and imagining the role natural history can play today. The preservation of threatened environments and the political ramifications of natural history seem particularly relevant in the twenty-first century, especially in light of the recent Gulf oil spill.

POL S 175, Politics of the Environment

Analysis of environmental policy issues and their treatment in the political process. Discussion of the interplay of substantive issues, ideology, institutions, and private groups in the development, management, protection, and preservation of natural resources and the natural environment.

SOC 126U, Sociology of the Urban Underclass

This course examines conservative, liberal, and radical perspectives on class, poverty, and race, and will allow a critical assessment of the social and political implications of the growing congruity between urban poverty and race.

WRIT 109ES, Writing for Environmental Studies

Analysis and practice of various forms of writing for environmental studies, both academic and professional. Attention to research methods, design of papers, development of graphics, stylistic clarity, and editing strategies.