Global Arc

This course will explore inequality in India, addressing linkages between social inequality and inequality in access to basic services; exposure to environmental pollution and climate risks; participation in governance; and, overall outcomes related to health and wellbeing. The topic of inequality will be grounded in the overarching topic of sustainable development. And, inequality in India will be discussed in a comparative manner with other countries and global trajectories.

What constitutes the current conjuncture in global environmental governance, and in what ways and to what ends is biological life-human and non-human-made part of neoliberal environmental projects? This course will use the concept of neoliberal natures to explore the challenges rapid global environmental change pose for conservation, sustainability and ecosystem health in the contemporary era. We consider the ecological and political implications of growing efforts to enroll material nature in market-based environmental schemes, and explore how these schemes unfold across different contexts to shape social and environmental sustainability.

Special topics courses related to the broad field of environmental studies.

Special topics courses related to the broad field of environmental studies. Seminar.

Examining the relationship between law and environmental policy, this course focuses on cases that have established policy principles. The first half of the seminar will be conducted using the Socratic method. The second half will allow students to reargue either the plaintiff or defendant position in a key case, which will be decided by the classroom jury.

Climate scientists have long agreed that climate change is real, potentially dangerous, and caused largely by humans. Despite these warnings, however, policymakers have still not taken significant action to limit greenhouse-gas emissions--in part because scientists talk mostly to each other, in technical terms most of us cannot understand. That is where science communicators come in. This class will give students the basic scientific knowledge; the narrative ability; and the technical skills to translate climate science into compelling stories, largely in video, that can help lead to greater public understanding of this crucial issue.

What is environmental racism? What is environmental justice? This course will explore those questions, focusing on the plantation as a key site for understanding the complex relationship between race and the environment in the U.S. and in other global contexts. We will trace the environmental legacies of the plantation through literature, film, and popular media from the eighteenth century to the present day, and will also examine histories of resistance in and against plantation geographies, from the antebellum cotton plantation to the contemporary prison complex.

Addressing global ecological and societal degradation depends on humanity practicing regenerative, or reciprocal, relationships with nature. Evidence suggests that we are collectively capable of producing restorative technological, behavioral, and social solutions, but they must be applied holistically across all human actions at every scale. We explore sustainability challenges in the context of ethics, justice, and behavioral psychology, including visits with experts, and survey-based investigations on campus. Students will be presented with real-time decision-making needs at Princeton, with an opportunity to influence those decisions.

This course considers the global history of Yersinia pestis, the bacterium that causes plague. It adopts an interdisciplinary approach to tease out macro-and micro-histories of the pandemics associated with the pathogen-the Justinianic Plague, Black Death, and Third Pandemic-and to pin down shifts in plague's past-biological, cultural, and ecological-vital for understanding plague's inconstant pandemicity. The course spans the sixth century to the present, Alexandria to Buenos Aires, and draws on diverse sources-from Byzantine hagiography to the New York Times to plague-victim teeth-to unravel plague's complexity and assess its impact.

The class will discuss the physics of ocean surface waves and its impacts on human life. We will cover the principle of ocean waves propagation across the oceans, with analogies to optics and acoustics. Using historical observations and modern modeling tools, we will discuss wave forecasting with practical examples including planning of D-Day during the second world war, or local surf forecasting. The influence of ocean waves on human life will be discussed, from their role on beach morphology, mitigation of storm surge, or tsunamis. Finally, we will discuss the ubiquitous representation of waves in arts/movies.