 | | One Hour Seminars for Spring 2005 – UH 348
ENVIRONMENTAL THEMES in GREEN
NOTE: Tues. or Thurs. seminars meet at the beginning of 75 min. slots, but only meet for 1 hr.
Berwald, Olaf (Modern Foreign Languages ) Monday 12:20-1:10
Pluricultural Concepts of Nature
How have different cultures imagined, worshipped, analyzed, and exploited “Nature?” Following a preludic journey through Ovid's "Metamorphoses," this course offers a comparative look at key moments in the cultural histories of modern and contemporary Germany, Italy, France, and Brazil. In what ways has “Nature” been addressed, resisted, and celebrated in poetry, paintings,
sculptures, and scientific essays? How do religious, political, and erotic appetites complement and compete with each other in our precarious dialogues with “Nature,” “Body,” “Environment,” and “Desire?” A course package with short texts will be available, and examples of visual
art will be integrated as well. Requirements: Active participation; short presentation; journal; research paper.
Park, William M. (Agricultural Economics) Wednesday 3:35-4:25
Can Markets Save the Environment
Market-oriented or incentive-based policy approaches can often achieve environmental goals more cost effectively than inflexible regulatory policy approaches. This seminar will explore the basic logic of these innovative approaches and their practical application in addressing a variety of resource conservation and environmental quality problems. Emphasis will be placed upon our experience with the Acid Rain Allowance Trading Program in the U.S. and the potential for using a market trading approach to reduce global carbon dioxide emissions. However, application of these approaches to water pollution, water resource scarcity, ocean fisheries depletion, and waste management will also be addressed.
Broadhead, Thomas (Earth & Planetary Sciences; Admissions Office) Tuesday 5:05-6:20
The Politics and Culture of Stamps
For more than a century and a half, postage stamps have not only helped send mail on its way, but have also served as political and cultural icons. In this seminar, we will explore the history of postage stamps and the messages that they carry across the globe as small, artistic pieces of propaganda. Each student will complete and present two brief papers (~ 5 pages each) – one of which will be a country-specific theme (e.g., an individual country, a colonial empire, or a topic within a country – such as hyperinflation or changes in government) – the other paper will approach a theme or topic as it is reflected differently in stamps of many countries (e.g., war, the environment, healthcare, human rights, women, ethnic or racial minorities). There will be a half-day visit to a local philatelic exhibition on March 5-6, and an optional day trip to a national level exhibition in Atlanta on February 19.
Pinckney, Paul (History) Tuesday 3:40-4:55
Environmental Issues in Historical Perspective
This seminar will take a longer view of our environmental concerns by having students read about and discuss how similar issues have affected previous countries and civilizations. Topics will include the impact of deforestation on the Roman Empire, the problem of a safe water supply in l9th century London, and a comparison of ecological consequences in early industrializing Western countries with more recently industrializing countries such as China. Students will keep a journal in which they reflect on these or similar topics and issues.
Nolt, John (Philosophy) Tuesday 2:10-3:25
Future Generations in Environmental Theory and Policy
This course involves a study of the problems and paradoxes that plague attempts to craft ethical policies toward future generations. Readings will center on Part IV of Derek Parfit's brilliant and difficult book Reasons and Persons and the literature it has spawned. The goal of the course is for each student to develop her/his own comprehensive theory of obligations to future generations and outline its policy implications.
MacLennan, Bruce (Computer Science) Thursday 2:10-3:25
Goethe, Faust, and Science
Although best known as a novelist, dramatist, and poet, Goethe considered his scientific work to be more important than his literary activities, but his conception of science was quite different from ours, for his approach to nature was empathetic, participatory, and holistic rather than analytic, observational, and reductive. As a result Goethean science has emerged as a possible foundation for a twenty-first century renewal of natural science and as a basis for an environmentally sensitive technology. Goethe's approach to natural science also permeates his epic drama, "Faust," on which he worked for more than 60 years. In this seminar we will read selections from Goethe's "Faust" (in English) and from his scientific writings, and weave around them a discussion about our relationship to nature, science, and technology, now and in the future. Among the Faustian technologies we will consider are nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, and genetic engineering.
For more information, visit the course webpage at: http://www.cs.utk.edu/~mclennan/Classes/UH348/.
Marks, Murray (Anthropology) Wednesday 11:15-12:05
Forensic Anthropology and the Medico-legal Investigation of Death
The past decade has seen exponential growth of forensic science application in investigations and the channeling of academic training to fuel that expertise. This burgeoning interest is a direct outgrowth of mass disaster events and media saturation with CSI, FBI Files, Cold Case, etc., not to mention the psychological clamor of our curiosity for all things morbid (especially when inflamed by the media). As an academic and applied discipline, forensic anthropology is not exempt from such attention by providing estimation of age, race, sex, stature, pathology and time since death in remains that are mutilated/fragmented, decomposed and/or skeletal. Essentially, when the traditional forensic pathological investigations become obsolete with the extension of postmortem time between death and discovery, the application of forensic anthropology has become more and more attractive. Forensic anthropology, by virtue of her holistic academic underpinnings, is today providing this array of clinical expertise and following that up with expert testimony. This class will explore the science that is forensic anthropology and focus on her place in the medico-legal system.
Howell, Benita (Anthropology and American Studies) Wednesday 12:20-1:10
Culture and Environmental Issues in Appalachia
Through discussion of essays in a collection I recently edited, (Culture, Environment, and Conservation in the Appalachian South, University of Illinois Press, 2002), we will explore regional environmental history through a cultural lens and consider cultural dimensions in perception and responses to contemporary environmental issues, from management of national parks and recreation areas to grassroots struggles against mountaintop removal strip mining or uncontrolled development of rural communities.
Weltzin, Jake (Ecology and Evolutionary Biology) Monday 2:30-3:20
Global Warming: Is the jury still out?
Several (but not too many) years ago, a very prominent politician argued that "the jury is still out" on the topic of global warming. However, it is now clear that "the jury is in," and the verdict has been read: global warming is a reality, and humans have contributed to the problem. Or, is it really a problem? This seminar will investigate the evidence that the climate has changed, and will delve into the role of human beings in this change. We will discuss the most recent predictions of how global and regional climates are likely to change over the next century, and will consider the various drivers that contribute to changes in the atmosphere, which in turn controls temperature and precipitation regimes. We will use this background information to assess how human and natural ecological systems might respond to ongoing and impending changes in climate. We will build our understanding by considering examples of global change research being conducted right here in east Tennessee.
Reichert, Susan (Ecology and Evolutionary Biology) Thursday 3:40-4:45
Ecological and Behavioral Challenges
This class will consist of a series of challenges on behavioral and ecological issues that are important to us today (e.g. global warming, aggressiveness, species invasion, mating strategies). The format will differ from the standard seminar format. In the first class we will divide into teams of 2-3 individuals. We will discuss the scientific method and the various ways in which it can be used in problem solving. An example will be given and worked out in the class period. Each subsequent challenge will take three weeks. In the first week a seminal paper will be discussed and the problem posed. The teams will work independently on the problem the following week with no formal class meeting though I will be available at the seminar time to facilitate the effort. In the third class session, each team will report on its findings. The challenges might involve deriving and testing a behavioral assay for some trait, the viewing of a movie with subsequent critique of the ecology or biology in it etc.
Greenberg, Neil (Ecology and Evolutionary Biology) Thursday 12:40-1:55
DEEP Ecology: Scientific and Spiritual Dimensions of our Relationships to Nature
DEEP ECOLOGY focuses on the interconnections of humanity and the environment. Each affects the other through countless connections that go back to prehistory. We will explore how human experience, needs, beliefs, and actions both challenge and respect ecological wisdom and harmony. Our discussions will be catalyzed and build upon lectures provided by distinguished scholars and then touch on >> the meaning on specific scientific interpretations of nature, >> the essential tension between innovation and stability, >> aboriginal and scientific wisdom, >> and the relative urgency of human needs served by our relationship to the environment from survival of the human organism to the prosperity of the human spirit.
Cable, Sherry (Sociology) Tuesday 12:40-1:55
Environmental Justice and Public Policy
Exposure to risk from a variety of environmental problems is not evenly distributed in populations. Instead, environmental risks constitute but one more inequality suffered by those who endure other inequalities because of their position in social hierarchies based on social class, race/ethnicity, gender, and age. All inequalities produce social problems that are typically addressed by public policies. This course examines the relationships among environmental inequalities, public policies, and environmental justice. We will ponder such questions as: What are the sources of environmental inequalities? What are the impacts of such inequalities? Is the presence of environmental INjustice evidence of policy failure? How do public policies preserve a society's system of inequalities? What is environmental justice? Should environmental justice be a societal goal?
Mora, Claudia (Earth and Planetary Sciences) Monday 1:25-2:15
Natural Disasters - When Bad Things Happen to Good People
The 1990's was somewhat ironically deemed the International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction-- and what a decade it was! Disaster losses in 1998 alone exceeded the $78 billion in losses for the entire decade of the '80's. There were three times as many great natural disasters in the 1990's as in the 1960's, and a nine-fold increase in the cost of these disasters. Is this just a case of good timing? Is this mere irony or is something else going on here? In the past, "disasterology" was approached exclusively from an engineering or mitigation viewpoint, or taught (very differently) in physical science or social science departments. Many new studies are beginning to understand that this division is arbitrary, at best, and may even perpetuate patently false myths and archetypes. This seminar will examine natural disasters from several perspectives- What are they? What controls their occurrence? How do we respond, personally and politically, to these events? Will Durant once said, "Civilization exists by geologic consent, subject to change without notice." This seminar asks the question: Is that really all there is to it? Are natural disasters acts of Nature? Acts of God? Or is there something distinctly unnatural about them?
Glover, Lorri (History) Wednesday 1:25-2:15
Making a New World: Indians and Colonists in North America
This seminar investigates the collision of Native American and European peoples, cultures, and environmental values during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in British North America. With little understanding of and even less interest in one another, colonists and Indians in North America struggled to live in the same environment. Differing in religious beliefs, agricultural practices, and family organization their interactions often grew contentious and even violent. This seminar will explore how Native Americans and colonists lived (and died) in the new world they created together. The seminar requires weekly readings, several short essays, and participation in discussions. | | |