This seminar will compare relationships between gender and the environment in a developed country, the U.S., and a developing country, India. We will look at the history of gender constructions of nature and natural resources and their relationship to environmental practices. We will examine the disproportionate impact of environmental destruction on women and children, particularly from poor and minority communities, as well as rapidly changing ideas and practices about environmental degradation and climate change. Among the topics we will consider are gender constructions in the history of each country’s agricultural policies and their effects on attitudes and practices toward the land and other resources like minerals, water, and forests. We will analyze gender, land tenure, and the law as it affects resource control and allocation in India. We will look at related questions concerning the control of natural resources in the U.S. like the disputed ownership of the water of Lake Erie in an impoverished suburb of Detroit. We will explore women’s roles in environmental struggles in both countries.
Scholars and aid workers have long observed that environmental destruction has differential impacts on men and women. Women are the major victims of natural disasters, like the Tsunami of 2002 and Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Environmental destruction affects women’s health and reproduction in unique and dangerous ways. Pesticides and nuclear wastes cause birth defects, complications in labor, and toxic concentrations in women’s breast milk. The growing field of environmental justice has drawn attention to the significance of race in the location of hazardous waste facilities and the disproportionate number of people of color and women who are affected by workplace hazards. Following the earthquake in Haiti, after years of demands by women’s activist groups, the U.N. decided for the first time to deliver aid directly to women because it recognized this was the most effective way of reaching the children who need it.
Limited to 20 students. Spring semester. Professors Basu and Saxton.
2023-24: Not offeredThe course offers students who have worked as interns or volunteers an interdisciplinary framework within which to think together about what it means to give. We will explore philanthropy’s diverse forms over time and across cultures; its philosophical underpinnings; its complex interrelationships with modern notions of charity, advocacy, and democracy; and its often paradoxical effects on social relations and public policy. The first half of the course considers what it means to foster a “love of humanity,” to offer and receive “the kindness of strangers,” to practice charity as a civic or religious obligation, as a status building stratagem or, simply, to help. We will look at how these diverse philanthropic expectations are laid out in various religious traditions, as well as in written works by Sophocles, Shakespeare, Alexis de Tocqueville, George Eliot, Marcel Mauss, Jane Addams, Ama Ata Aidoo, and Michael Ignatieff, and in images created by selected artists and filmmakers. The second half of the course examines case studies and literary representations of philanthropic efforts and outcomes in a variety of social situations, from the perspectives of donors and recipients; board members and volunteers; advocacy groups, policy makers, and non-governmental organizations.
Not open to first-year students. Priority will be given to students who have recent experience working as volunteers or interns. Limited to 20 students. This course may be used for credit towards the major in English and Black Studies. Fall semester. Professor Cobham-Sander and Ms. Mead, Director of the Center for Community Engagement.
2023-24: Not offered
"Numbers rule the world," many scholars agree. That is, they have become “the dominant form of acceptable evidence in most areas of public life.” We will examine these claims and their implications by asking several questions: How did numbers come to rule? What kinds of numbers? Where do numbers rule and where don't they? What differences do they make? How are the numbers and scientific claims we encounter created? How do they change as they travel from their original scientific context into everyday life? Ultimately, we seek to improve our ability to understand and evaluate the numbers and related scientific claims we encounter by seeing them as human creations, not just as "nuggets of objective fact."
Limited to 15 students. Spring semester. Professor Himmelstein
2023-24: Not offeredThe dependency of many countries on marine organisms for food has resulted in severe population declines in cod, bluefin tuna, swordfish, and abalone, as well as numerous other marine organisms. In this seminar we will examine the sociological, political, and economic impacts of global depletion of fisheries. Questions addressed are: What is the scope of extinctions or potential extinctions due to over-harvesting of marine organisms? How are fisheries managed, and are some approaches to harvesting better than others? How do fisheries extinctions affect the society and economy of various countries, and ecosystem stabililty? How do cultural traditions of fishermen influence attempts to manage fisheries? Does aquaculture offer a sustainable alternative to overfishing the seas, and what is aquaculture’s impact on ecosystem stability? Three class hours per week.
Requisite: Environmental Studies 12, Biology 23, or consent of the instructors. Not open to first-year students. Omitted 2010-11. Professors Temeles and Dizard.
2023-24: Not offeredIn the waning decades of both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, biologists struggled with one another and with the public over how to regard-and whether to regard at all-our nation’s biotic patrimony. In the early twentieth century, the struggle was distilled into two choices: preservation or conservation. Conservation became the dominant expression of environmental policy. By the end of the twentieth century, however, it became clear that environmental policies were failing. Reflecting this, a number of prominent biologists and ecologists created a new subfield of biology, conservation biology, devoted to addressing what they see as a looming biodiversity crisis. A corollary of this emergent concern quickly emerged: we need to return key ecosystems to an approximation of what they were before humans intruded. In this colloquium, we will explore the interaction between biologists and the general public. In particular, we will critically examine the policies and projects that have recently been promoted by prominent conservation biologists. We will pay particular attention to proposals for large scale “rewilding” of North America (e.g., the proposal to return the Western Plains to a “Buffalo Commons”).
Not open to first-year students. Omitted 2010-11. Professor Dizard.
2023-24: Not offered