ENST 313L - Environmental Problems and Environmental Activism in the People’s Republic of China Lab
Examines the rise of environmental social activism in China; the historical, political, cultural, and economic roots of China’s current environmental problems, including deforestation, air pollution, water pollution, and species loss. Students learn theories of environmental justice and explore the rise of environmental activism in the PRC. The course will utilize pedagogical methods from InterGroup Dialogue (IGD) to provide students with the intellectual tools to analyze issues of power, privilege, and identity and by extension, their own position in the world in relation to these environmental issues.
Food is fundamental — it sustains us and is essential for our survival — but food is more than just what we eat. Food is also a commodity with complex global markets and ecological impacts; it is highly regulated through our political processes and institutions; and it forms a key part of our culture and the social rhythms of everyday life. Students explore these many dimensions of food, focusing especially on key questions about where it comes from, how it is produced, and how it is embedded in our economic, political, and cultural institutions. Students participate in a service learning internship at Common Thread Community Farm in Madison, NY. Also involves field trips to and guest speakers from local food and farming communities.
and students must have an open morning (no other enrolled courses) on Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday, from 8 a.m. until 12 p.m., in order to accommodate the farm internship component of the course. Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: No First-year Area of Inquiry: Social Relations,Inst.& Agents Liberal Arts CORE: Global Engagements
Global environmental justice examines both procedural and distributive inequities as well as injustices in political relationships among nation states. Additionally, it places emphasis on a variety of global political issues, which have evolved from environmental concerns that transcend national boundaries. This intermediate course expounds on the concepts and theories of environmental justice from an international perspective. It evaluates the international frame of environmental justice from a human rights perspective and its applicability to different case studies. A close examination of the theoretical North-South relationship, in terms of dependency and exploitation of peripheral (South) countries by core (North) countries, is central to the course. It analyzes a constellation of issues labeled as global environmental justice, such as tribal exterminations, dislocations of marginalized communities, and resource conflicts. Real world examples of environmental justice cases are critically assessed to develop an understanding of the complex relationships among actors that lead to environmental injustices.
Credits: 1.00 Corequisite: None Prerequisites: None Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: No First-year Area of Inquiry: None Liberal Arts CORE: Global Engagements
Historically, hunting for food has represented one of the most direct ways in which people have engaged with nature. Some scholars even believe that the “hunting instinct” is a fundamental aspect of human identity. People in modern industrialized societies, however, often have little idea about the origins of the flesh they consume, most of which is raised and slaughtered on an industrial-scale. While the majority continue to eat meat, poultry, and/or fish, a minority have chosen to become vegetarians or even vegans for ethical, religious, cultural, health-oriented, or environmental reasons. Others continue to hunt and fish but within ecosystems dramatically altered by human intervention and amidst cultural landscapes complicated by commercialized and trophy hunting. Drawing upon a wide range of sources including literature, artistic and documentary films, works of popular culture, autobiographical accounts, online hunting (and anti-hunting) forums, diverse web resources, self-reflective essays, and scholarly approaches ranging from animal studies to humanistic ecocriticism, this course investigates the intertwined themes of hunting, industrial versus small-scale farming and fishing, eating, vegetarianism, and the ethical and existential choices they present to members of modern industrialized societies.
Credits: 1.00 Corequisite: None Prerequisites: None Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts CORE: Global Engagements
Public policies to protect the environment are among the most important and controversial issues in local, state, and national government. This course analyzes the politics of environmental protection in the United States through the use of social science theory and a variety of quantitative and qualitative methods. The course introduces frameworks for understanding environmental policy problems and reviews several important American environmental laws. Readings include social science “classics” on the environment, as well as recent scholarship on environmental politics and emerging environmental issues. Topics covered in the course include the politics of environmental science, environmentalism as a social movement, environmental lawmaking in Congress, bureaucracy and environmental regulation, federalism, environmental law, and environmental justice.
ENST 340 - Environmental Cleanup: Methods and Regulation
Introduces students to the major hazardous environmental pollution problems in the US and the regulatory framework within which these problems are managed. Students will be challenged to examine the processes and structures that lead to hazardous environmental pollution, the strategies that are used to clean up environmentally polluted spaces and determine the major hazardous pollutants that are of highest concern for federal regulators. Additionally, students will critically assess the current regulatory framework for environmental pollution control, determining the strengths and weaknesses of these statues. Finally students will be presented with the opportunity to research and develop cleanup plans for a specific contaminated site based on field trips to local sites.
Credits: 1.00 Corequisite: None Prerequisites: None Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: None Liberal Arts CORE: None
ENST 345 - Water Pollution: Chemistry and Environmental Engineering
Examines how chemical properties affect water contaminants’ movement in aquatic systems. Using principles of science and engineering, students will examine the toxicity of different manmade and naturally occurring chemicals, applying polynomials and chemistry principles to real world environmental conditions. Students develop scientific analytical skills that will help them to understand the broader field of environmental chemistry. Students explore a range of topics including the acidity (pH) of water and its effect on chemicals’ solubility, oxidation-reduction (redox) reactions, and the dissolution of gasses such as carbon dioxide (C02).
ENST 358 - Ecosystems, Environmental Threats, and response in Trinidad and Tobago (Study Group)
Caribbean environmental issues and concerns are usually overshadowed by the images of sea and sun, yet the region, which is composed of a multiplicity of countries, face both individual and common environmental threats. Trinidad and Tobago provide a unique perspective on the Caribbean given its cultural cosmopolitan richness and its label as the most industrialized. Students seek to understand the main ecosystems, environmental threats, and the ways in which the country has responded to these threats. While studying in Trinidad and Tobago students get hands-on experience with these ecosystems and threats in addition to learning from a number of stakeholders – NGOs, community-based organizations, and government – to understand the complexity of responses for small island states.
Prerequisites: None Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: Social Relations,Inst.& Agents Liberal Arts CORE: Global Engagements
Our world is facing unprecedented pressures from global warming, habitat loss, pollution and a myriad of other anthropogenic drivers that are negatively impacting species and ecosystems. The biological discipline that addresses the impacts of these drivers on biodiversity and ecosystem function is Conservation Biology. The step after the identification of a conservation issue is to determine conservation priorities for addressing it, and then formulating evidence-based policy. Students learn the sustainable management of socio-ecological systems using conservation biology and policy studies. Framed around a case study, a long-term research project in the Cardelus lab on the myriad impacts of high deer density on the Village and Town of Hamilton.
Credits: 1 Corequisite: ENST 389L Prerequisites: None Major/Minor Restrictions: Only Environmental Studies, Environmental Geology, Environmental Geography, Environmental Biology, Environmental Economics Majors and Minors Class Restriction: None Recommended: ENST 202, ENST 232 Area of Inquiry: None Liberal Arts CORE: None
Credits: 0.25 Corequisite: ENST 389 Prerequisites: None Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: None Liberal Arts CORE: None
ENST 390 - Community-based Study of Environmental Issues
This project-based, interdisciplinary course examines current environmental issues in the context of community-based learning. Topics for investigation are selected by faculty, usually in conjunction with the campus sustainability coordinator, the Upstate Institute, or directly with local and regional agencies or organizations. Students get practical experience working in interdisciplinary teams to examine environmental issues with a goal of developing relevant recommendations.
Credits: 1.00 Corequisite: None Prerequisites: At least two courses related to environmental studies Major/Minor Restrictions: Only Environmental Biology, Environmental Economics, Environmental Geology, Environmental Geography, Environmental Studies Majors Class Restriction: None Recommended:
Opportunity for individual study in areas not covered by formal course offerings, under the guidance of a member of the faculty.
Credits: variable Corequisite: None Prerequisites: None Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: None Liberal Arts CORE: None
In this senior seminar, students discuss the relevant literature (from multiple disciplines) and do research on one or more selected environmental issue or issues, chosen by the instructor. Topics differ from year to year. The goal is to achieve an advanced, interdisciplinary understanding of contemporary environmental issues.
Major/Minor Restrictions: Only Environmental Studies, Environmental Geology, Environmental Geography, Environmental Biology, Environmental Economics Majors and Minors Class Restriction: Only Senior Restrictions: Senior ENST majors & minors only; others by permission Area of Inquiry: None Liberal Arts CORE: None
Opportunity for individual study in areas not covered by formal course offerings, under the guidance of a member of the faculty.
Credits: variable Corequisite: None Prerequisites: None Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: None Liberal Arts CORE: None
From the films we watch to the personal profiles we maintain online, media saturates our lives. Film and mass media can be powerful determinants of ideology, identity, and historical consciousness. This course is a historical survey of media technologies and environments, combining course readings with a required weekly film screening. The theoretical concepts introduced in this course enable students to critically approach the visual culture around them: just how immersed are we in the virtual, and what are the strategies for engaging with or disengaging from virtual worlds? Students learn to respond to film and media as proactive, critical, and articulate viewers. Students also acquire the vocabulary, conceptual strategies, and interpretive skills necessary to closely analyze the form and content of film and media, as well as the ability to set their own relation to the ideologies all representations convey.
Explores the production and reception of film in a global context, as well as the various ways individuals and communities around the world create and receive film. Students explore the concept of “national cinema,” the interplay of local aesthetic traditions and transnational industrial and artistic practices, the role of cinema in diasporic communities, and the impact of global capitalism on film production, distribution, and exhibition. Films depicting immigration, exile, the refugee, insider/outsider status, and other modes of geographic movement are explored.
Regulating and being regulated by a variety of information flows on a daily basis from SMS texts, snapchats, and tweets, to live news feeds, corporate data transfers, and government communiques. We increasingly experience our private and public lives as a hypermediated encounter with the world at large. What impact do these media flows have on our experiences of the local and the global? Simultaneously, how should we understand contemporary mass media themselves as “global”? Have transformations in print, broadcast, and digital media fundamentally altered how we think of the near and the far, the familiar and the foreign, the national and the transnational, the West and the non-West? This course will address these questions through the two structuring notions of the “flow” and the “counter-flow,” and analyze the role that media play as both a unifying and a divisive agent, consolidating identities and nationalisms in some instances, and de-territorializing the same in others.
An introduction to major works of Italian cinema from the silent era to contemporary productions. Students will watch and discuss groundbreaking films by Italian directors such as Rossellini, Fellini, Antonioni, Pasolini, Wertmüller, Benigni, and others. Places Italian cinema within the context of European art cinema and film theory, and focuses on the ways these films represent and challenge Italian history, culture, and identity. It emphasizes the study of cinematic analysis and filmmaking techniques, as well as the historical and cultural situation in Italy from the 1920s to the present. Students are required to attend weekly screenings in addition to regular class meetings. Taught in English, with the option of a discussion group in Italian.
Approaches the study of rhetoric by focusing on the relationship between text and image. How does the combination of verbal and visual elements communicate different arguments to different audiences? How do verbal/visual texts reflect or even create cultural identities, norms, values, and practices? With the goal of becoming effective rhetorical critics, as well as incisive consumers and producers of visual culture, students both study and create a variety of visual texts.
Corequisite: None Prerequisites: None Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts CORE: None
Examines lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer film cultures from transnational and global perspectives. Courses on LGBTQ cinema most often focus on North America and Western Europe, well-known for their prolific output of gay, lesbian, and transgender film and media. Less frequently included are the wide range of films produced (since the 1980s and 1990s) from India, Thailand, Hong Kong, Egypt, Tunisia, Guinea, Uganda, Israel, and Russia. Analzying these films alongside contemporary theoretical discussions of gender and sexuality, students will explore how LGBTQ concerns from non-Western countries continue to test the possibilities of film and media aesthetics and politics, and bring the cinematic form in dialogue with the complexities and geopolitics of gender and sexuality.
Prerequisites: None Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts CORE: Global Engagements
FMST 235 - Independent Film Production (Study Group)
Introduces students to the theory and practice of independent filmmaking. Students become familiar with the fundamentals of media production, including time-based visual storytelling; digital video and audio technologies; and image composition and framing. Simultaneously, students explore the history of independent film production in the United States and particularly in New York City, as well as the narrative, stylistic, industrial, and cultural aspects of contemporary U.S. independent film.
What is performance? The verb “to perform” can be variously defined as “to carry out an action,” “to discharge a duty,” “to accomplish a task,” and “to present to an audience.” Interdisciplinary in nature, students explores performance in the context of the performing and media arts, as well as in the context of ritual, politics, and everyday life. Emphasizes the relationship between performance and race, gender, sexuality, and other vectors of identity: how are various types of difference enacted, articulated, and represented through performative acts?
Focuses on the ways that comics - often defined as the interplay of words and images - convey specific messages, whether instructional, narrative, persuasive, or other. Close analyses draw on principles of visual rhetoric, comics scholarship, photography, and related disciplines. Readings cover the theory, history, terminology, and genres of graphic narratives.
Credits: 1.0 Crosslisted:WRIT 270 Corequisite: None Prerequisites: None Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts CORE: None
FMST 288 - New Media: History and Theory from Netflix to VR
Focusing on 21st century media production and consumption, students explore the impact of digital technologies on film, television, and social media. In addition to viewing a wide range of recent and contemporary works, from web documentaries to interactive films and Virtual Reality, “New Media” engages more directly and materially with contemporary moving images, industries, and infrastructures. The course addresses key issues in recent film and media theory by historicizing and contextualizing recent debates surrounding movie-going, connected viewing, interactivity, and streaming.
Opportunity for individual study in areas not covered by formal course offerings, under the guidance of a member of the faculty.
Credits: variable Corequisite: None Prerequisites: None Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: None Liberal Arts CORE: None
FMST 303 - The Rhetoric of Data Visualization & Infographics
Our world is increasingly visual; more and more of the information we consume and produce is presented in images. This course focuses on the visual presentation of numerical information - everything from box-and-whisker plots to flashy infographics - and specifically how such information can effectively persuade its readers. Emphasis will be on both analyzing and making visualizations; there will be no attention to data collection or analysis. Students can expect to improve their visual literacy skills; no facility with statistics or software packages is required.
Corequisite: None Prerequisites: None Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts CORE: None
Students will explore the ways in which innovations in media have changed the shape of narrative and textuality. People often assume that new media is a 20th-century development, but this course will be a more historicized view; the printing press, after all, changed media more fundamentally than anything since. Starting with a foundation of media theory and narrative theory, the course will then work through the ages: printing; newspapers; color printing; radio; television; electronic fiction; fan fiction; hypertext; remix aesthetics; and video games.
Corequisite: None Prerequisites: None Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts CORE: None
Surveys the traditions of personal, experimental, ethnographic, and political documentary filmmaking. This overview of the history and aesthetics of documentary examines its origins, forms, goals, and contemporary styles while at the same time problematizing its canonical readings and reception. Issues covered include documentary styles, documentary representation of history and memory, the filmmaker’s relationship to the subject and the viewer, and the impact of technology on documentary techniques. Particular attention is paid to the influence that certain social and political movements have had on documentaries and filmmakers. A required film series accompanying the class includes works by directors such as Flaherty, Riefenstahl, Wiseman, Rouch, Morris, Moffatt, and many others.
or a cinema studies course Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts CORE: None
Credits: 0.00 Corequisite:FMST 333 Prerequisites: None Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: None Liberal Arts CORE: None
Explores the various ways in which sound and music have functioned in visual and sonic media. Tracing the history of sound(ing) media from the advent of the phonograph and the rise of radio through silent film and classical Hollywood cinema, to the concept album and music on television, and finally, to the turn to the digital and sound “in the cloud,” students examine a series of musical media “objects” and the theory, rhetoric, and practice that has surrounded them. Particular attention will be devoted to the integration of film, music, and media industries and the ways in which music and sound work with other elements of film and media to reflect and construct social and cultural identities. Through readings, screenings, and written assignments, students acquire the tools and language to analyze and discuss the complex ways in which music, film, and media interact.
FMST 341E - Performing & Media Arts in Hong Kong (Extended Study)
A three-week extended study course in the spring. The course offers students an immersive experience in Hong Kong’s vibrant performing and media arts scene. It includes visits to live performances, film screenings, museums, and galleries, as well as lectures and walking tours with Hong Kong-based scholars on the city’s history, arts, and culture.
FMST 350 - Hollywood and the World: Performing Gender and Sexuality Onscreen
Explores the construction and performance of gender and sexuality in and through Hollywood film. Using a variety of critical approaches, students examine the various ways in which gender and sexual identities are represented and signified onscreen in a variety of films from the silent period through the early 21st century. Particular attention is paid to how Hollywood films have historically reproduced and/or questioned contemporary gender roles and sexual identities, and how cultural narratives surrounding masculinity, femininity, sexuality, and queerness have been challenged and/or reaffirmed in Hollywood productions. In addition to close examinations of onscreen performances, generic conventions, technical practices and aesthetic styles in specific films, the class explores various ways in which the spectator’s gender and sexuality have been implicated in film viewing over the course of the 20th century.
Examines the emergence, development, and socio-political outcomes of the explosion of online networks and social groups in the 20th and 21st Century. As the lines between the virtual and the real comingle with increasing fluidity, the defining characteristics of community, society, democracy, nation, and selfhood are fundamentally transformed. The hyper-accelerated and globalizing force of the Internet has been met with triumphalism from cyber-utopians and vehement caution from skeptics. Only one thing is certain, the organizing forces of online life have transformed the social fabric of global society. Examining the fluctuating character of citizenship, community, social identity, leisure, labor and economy, love and sexuality, privacy, and social mobilization, we will examine a cross-section of literature on post-Internet life.
Algorithms, a systematic way to perform a task in a finite number of steps, existed long before the computer was invented. In the digital age, algorithms are chains of actions or steps that define how software will perform and react. As such they condition, shape, and transform the daily lives of billions. They help shift political opinions and shape cultural tastes. However, the logic on which algorithmic systems are based and the infrastructures that sustain them are still largely unknown to their users (and, increasingly, to their developers). Students will explore several case studies – from Netflix’s recommendation system to voice assistants – in order to demystify the logic of algorithms and map the understudied
ways in which they paradoxically decrease diversity of tastes, opinions, and experiences despite the techno-utopian promise of endless choice. This process of “un-black boxing” will emphasize “the implantation gap” in algorithmic systems and the ways in which they give birth to new systems of control, surveillance, and biopower.
Credits: 1.0 Prerequisites: None Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts CORE: None
Examines the diverse film and media ecosystem of New York, including the interplay between independent film and media-making, community-based media projects, and corporate film and media-making, in order to develop a nuanced understanding of the aesthetic, cultural, political, and economic context in which media operate in New York. Students explore New York’s role as an exhibition hub for globally-produced film and media, applying academic discourses on film and media to the critical analysis of film/media festivals, institutions, organizations. Throughout, students simultaneously engage the historical and contemporary forces shaping various regions of New York, including immigration, racial and economic disparity, rural/urban and upstate/downstate politics, and gentrification and displacement. How do New York’s complex social issues shape, manifest in, and impact its arts and media institutions, its artists and media-makers, and the art/media they create?
FMST 382 - Media Industries: Practice and Perspectives (Study Group)
Explores the contours and practices of media industries (film, television, print, video game, podcast, and mobile technologies through both academic study and structured internship and shadowing opportunities. Students examine how and why contemporary media content, hardware, and software become situated within industrial structures of production, distribution, and exhibition both historically and in our contemporary moment. Students also explore the ways in which media and technological developments are impacted by ownership, conceptions of genre and markets, funding structures, and regulation, offering students terminological and theoretical frameworks for understanding media industries. Offered as part of the New York City Study Group.
Offers an advanced level study of a specific and narrowed field within the discipline of film and media studies. Each year, students focus on topics that reflect the breadth of film and media studies at Colgate. Faculty teach in the area of their scholarly expertise on a rotating basis. Focus may be on an in-depth study of a filmmaker, or a school of film, or genre, or focus on an advanced study of the history and theory of television or media, among other things.
Credits: 1 Corequisite: FMST 390L Prerequisites: FMST 200 Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: None Liberal Arts CORE: None Formerly: Formerly FMST 400
Credits: 0 Corequisite: FMST 390 Prerequisites: None Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: None Liberal Arts CORE: None
Opportunity for individual study in areas not covered by formal course offerings, under the guidance of a member of the faculty.
Credits: variable Corequisite: None Prerequisites: None Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: None Liberal Arts CORE: None
FMST 410 - Senior Seminar in Film and Media Studies
Examines a constellation of debates, topics, and methods in film and media studies. Emphasis is placed on close analysis of media objects, critical evaluation of contemporary film and media theory and methodologies, and the application of interdisciplinary approaches. Topics for consideration might include: modernity and mass culture; media aesthetics, politics, and power; film and media historiography; spectatorship practices; media and identity; film and the digital; media installations and site specificity; and spectacle and surveillance.
Opportunity for individual study in areas not covered by formal course offerings, under the guidance of a member of the faculty.
Credits: variable Corequisite: None Prerequisites: None Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: None Liberal Arts CORE: None
FREN 121 - Introduction to French Language & Culture I
The FREN 121,122 sequence is a highly interactive course that introduces students to the basic skills of understanding, speaking, reading and writing in the French language. The sequence acquaints students with the rich world of Francophone culture through conversations, the discussion of short texts, the French language table and coffee hours, film, and other resources. Online tools help students understand and appreciate the nuances of French grammar, vocabulary, and expression. Language Placement Guidelines
Credits: 1.00 When Offered: Fall semester only
Corequisite: None Prerequisites: None Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts CORE: None
FREN 122 - Introduction to French Language & Culture II
FREN 122 builds upon the skills of understanding, speaking, reading and writing in the French language acquired in FREN 121. Increased proficiency in speaking is achieved through class presentations, debates, films and discussions relating to contemporary issues in the Francophone world. Language Placement Guidelines
Credits: 1.00 When Offered: Spring semester only
Corequisite: None Prerequisites: None Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts CORE: None
FREN 195 - Elementary-Level French Language Abroad
Elementary-level language courses taken abroad with a Colgate study group, an approved program, or in a foreign institution of higher learning.
Credits: 1 Prerequisites: None Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts CORE: None
FREN 201 - Intermediate French: Conversation and Composition
Designed to improve students’ ability to understand, speak, read, and write French. Class time is devoted to communication activities, a study of intermediate grammar, conversational vocabulary, and Francophone culture. Language Placement Guidelines
Credits: 1.00 Corequisite: None Prerequisites: Two or three years of secondary-school French, or a one- year college elementary French course. Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Restrictions: Not open to students who score 3 or higher on the French AP language exam Recommended: May be taken as a refresher course by students who studied French in secondary school as follows: three years of study ending at least one-half year before, four years of study ending at least a year and a half before. Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts CORE: None
FREN 202 - Intermediate French: Language, Culture, and Literature
Designed to increase the student’s ability to understand, speak, read, and write French. Study includes a review of the more difficult points of intermediate grammar, vocabulary, conversational practice, and short compositions. Additionally, focus is on building familiarity with concepts and skills necessary for the study of literature. Through the practice of the language, the reading of short literary texts, and the use of other materials, students are introduced to diverse aspects of French and Francophone cultures. Language Placement Guidelines
Credits: 1.00 Corequisite: None Prerequisites: Three to four years of secondary-school French, or
or equivalent Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Restrictions: Not open to students who have received credit for 202 by scoring 4 on the AP exam Recommended: Students with more than four years of HS French should not register for FR 202. Those students should register for the appropriate 300-level courses. Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts CORE: Global Engagements
Opportunity for individual study in areas not covered by formal course offerings, under the guidance of a member of the faculty.
Credits: variable Corequisite: None Prerequisites: None Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts CORE: None
FREN 295 - Intermediate-Level French Language Abroad
Intermediate-level language courses taken abroad with a Colgate study group, an approved program, or in a foreign institution of higher learning.
Credits: 1 Prerequisites: None Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts CORE: None
FREN 351 - Introduction to French Literature: From Chivalry to Versailles
As an introduction, through reading and discussion, to three diverse and formative periods of French literature, this course shows the inspiration and variety of expression that mark each period. Readings include selections from La Chanson de Roland, courtly romance, the fabliaux (all medieval writings are read in modern French versions); prose and poetry of Renaissance France; tragic and comic writers of the French classical theater. Language Placement Guidelines
Credits: 1.00 Corequisite: None Prerequisites: At least four years of secondary-school French or
Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Restrictions: Students who complete a 400-level course in French may not register for this course. Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts CORE: None
Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Restrictions: Students who complete a 400-level course in French may not register for this course. Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts CORE: None
FREN 353 - Introduction to French Literature: Literary Innovations in the 20th to 21st Centuries
Offers a close reading of some representative works of the 20th and 21st centuries. Selections are chosen from the shorter fiction, drama, and poetry of major French writers and studied in the context of French history and major intellectual, literary, and artistic movements. Authors may include Apollinaire, Gide, Sartre, Camus, Ionesco, Ponge, Ernaux and Modiano. Language Placement Guidelines
Credits: 1.00 Corequisite: None Prerequisites: At least four years of secondary-school French or
Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Restrictions: Students who complete a 400-level course in French may not register for this course. Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts CORE: None
FREN 354 - Introduction to French Literature: The Francophone World
Offers an overview of various bodies of literature written in French outside of France, focusing on five main geographical areas that historically constituted the French empire: the Caribbean, North Africa, West and Central Africa, Asia, and North America. Full texts as well as excerpts from a variety of genres are studied in the context of the history and geography of those regions. Through the exploration of key literary texts, particular attention is given to the effects of colonialism on language, identity, and artistic creation. Language Placement Guidelines
Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Restrictions: Students who complete a 400-level course in French may not register for this course. Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts CORE: Global Engagements
FREN 361 - French Composition, Grammar, and Conversation
Structured as a review of grammatical principles with emphasis on correctness in expository composition in French. Not open to students who score 5 on the AP language exam, except by special permission of instructor. Must be taken on campus to fulfill major or minor requirements. Language Placement Guidelines
Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Restrictions: Not open to students with a score of 5 on AP language exam, except by permission of instructor. Must be taken on campus to fulfill major or minor requirements. Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts CORE: None
Opportunity for individual study in areas not covered by formal course offerings, under the guidance of a member of the faculty.
Credits: variable Corequisite: None Prerequisites: None Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts CORE: None
Advanced-level language courses taken abroad with a Colgate study group, an approved program, or in a foreign institution of higher learning.
Credits: 1 Prerequisites: None Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts CORE: None
Traces the development of French theater through close readings of major and influential theatrical works from the 17th and 18th centuries. Major dramatic genres such as tragedy, comedy, and Romantic drama and their development are examined in their historical and cultural contexts. Through critical readings of these plays, students identify an evolving sensibility concerning the definition of the hero and the contingencies of fate, love, and personal choice. Students consider as well the shifting set of literary conventions through which playwright and audience negotiated these ideas. Authors studied may include Corneille, Racine, Molière, Marivaux, and Beaumarchais.
Credits: 1.00 Corequisite: None Prerequisites: Two 350-level French literature courses Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts CORE: None
FREN 423 - The 18th-Century Epistolary Novel in France
Examines some of the French 18th century’s most celebrated “letter novels.” Through readings of Montesquieu, Graffigny, Rousseau, and Laclos, the course focuses on the formal and thematic development of the epistolary genre over a period of some 60 years. The novels are read against a historical background stretching from the reign of Louis XIV through the French Revolution.
Credits: 1.00 Corequisite: None Prerequisites: None Two 350-level French literature courses Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts CORE: None
FREN 425 - Libertine Fiction of the French 18th Century
Beginning in the 17th century under the label libertinage érudit, libertine fiction evolves into a major genre in the Enlightenment. The course follows its development through readings of Prèvost, Crébillon fils, Diderot, Denon, and Sade, and explores the following questions: How do philosophy, fiction, and sexual politics coalesce in libertine literature? How can one reconcile libertinage - a way of living and writing frequently reduced to passion and sensuality - with the broader currents of the most “rational” century in French literary history? An exploration of libertine literature thus entails a focus on cultural history, and serves as a point of departure for a broader reflection on the Enlightenment.
Credits: 1.00 Corequisite: None Prerequisites: Two 350-level French literature courses Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts CORE: None
Examines some of the relationships between Enlightenment thought and the dominant forms of written expression in the French 18th century. Through readings, students consider a number of the Enlightenment’s most pressing concerns, such as moral and political philosophy, religious and civil tolerance, natural law, and the role of literature and the arts in society, among others. Authors read include Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot, Beaumarchais, and Sade.
Credits: 1.00 Corequisite: None Prerequisites: Two 350-level French literature courses Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts CORE: None
Studies the evolution and transmutation of conventions of quest literature from the Middle Ages to the present day. Examines the significance of the changes within the genre as reflections of the cultures from which they emerge. Readings range from the romances of Chrétien de Troyes to the contemporary French novel.
Credits: 1.00 Corequisite: None Prerequisites: Two 350-level French literature courses Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts CORE: None
The theme of the court is used to explore the major works in prose and poetry of classical France, reading these works as examples both of insightful social analysis and of outstanding achievements in literary style and art. Readings are drawn primarily from the works of Madame de Sévigné, Racine, Pascal, La Rochefoucauld, Madame de Lafayette, and La Bruyère. Key topics include the relationship between writer and society in 17th-century France, Versailles as a theatrical setting for the Sun-King, and literature as both social commentary and divertissement. The seminar also studies the theme of the court as it is expressed in 17th-century painting and music.
Credits: 1.00 Corequisite: None Prerequisites: Two 350-level French literature courses Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts CORE: None
Focuses on some of the major poets of the 19th century, by studying their work in the context of the greater political, social, and historical events of the time. Readings concentrate on representative texts of the following poets: Lamartine, Alfred de Vigny, Marceline Desbordes-Valmore, Hugo, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Mallarmé, and others.
Credits: 1.00 Corequisite: None Prerequisites: Two 350-level French literature courses Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts CORE: None
FREN 445 - Writing the Self in the 20th Century: Autobiography in French
Examines the development and specificities of 20th-century autobiographical texts. While the main focus is on the texts themselves, some related theoretical problems are also considered, such as the conditions and possibility of writing the “self”; autobiography’s link to other types of personal writings; its relationship to fiction; and its role in our modern definition of “humanity.” This genre being rooted in questions of the emergence of the “self,” particular attention is given to writers who, because of their gender and/or sexual identity and their designations as francophone writers, were traditionally regarded as “other.” Authors read may include Gide, Sartre, Beauvoir, Sarraute, Bouraoui, and Daas.
Credits: 1.00 Corequisite: None Prerequisites: Two 350-level French literature courses Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts CORE: None
FREN 450 - French Narrative in the Early 20th Century
The first part of the 20th century marks a shift in the modern Hexagonal French narrative from the pursuit of objectivity and the representation of social structures and systems, to a greater preoccupation with subjectivity, the exploration of personal identity, and interpersonal relations. Through the close study of texts by authors such as Gide, Proust, Breton, and Yourcenar, this seminar examines the ways in which questions of personal identity and subjectivity are explored through new approaches to traditional narrative forms.
Credits: 1.00 Corequisite: None Prerequisites: Two 350-level French literature courses Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts CORE: None
Focuses on major works of literature written in French in the late 20th and 21st centuries. Examines how questions of individual and collective identity, agency, and intersectionality inform literary expression, and how literature can be used to make sense of those questions. Through the study of select texts from France and the francophone world,students are invited to consider the role of history and the place of individual voices in complex colonial and post-colonial contexts. Authors may include de Beauvoir, Duras, Sarraute, Djebar, Bey, Cixous, and Chami.
Credits: 1.00 Corequisite: None Prerequisites: Two 350-level French literature courses Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts CORE: Global Engagements
This seminar examines the literature written in French by Maghrebi and Beur women authors since the early 1980s. The product of a colonial and post-colonial history, this is a literature where cultures, histories, identities, genres, and languages intersect. It gives voice to new questions of identity and self-definition through the exploration of traditional as well as innovative forms of writing. In order to establish the historical and cultural contexts in which this body of literature has emerged and is growing, the course includes an overview of the history of Franco-Maghrebi relations and Maghrebi immigration to France. Through the reading of texts by Maghrebi and Beur authors, this course explores and discusses issues such as imperialism and colonialism, post-colonialism, cultural translocation, identity politics, gender and race, religion, multilingualism, sexuality, urban development and design, etc.
Credits: 1.00 Corequisite: None Prerequisites: Two 350-level French literature courses Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts CORE: Global Engagements
This seminar, offered on an irregular basis, provides the opportunity for extensive study of the works of the most distinguished authors writing in the French language before 1800. It is taught by faculty members who have particular interest and expertise in the literature to be examined. FREN 481 is a category 1 course.
Credits: 1.00 Corequisite: None Prerequisites: Two 350-level literature courses Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts CORE: None
This seminar provides the opportunity for extensive study of the works of the most distinguished authors writing in the French language after 1800. It is taught by faculty members who have particular interest and expertise in the literature to be examined. Counts toward Category II for the major.
Credits: 1.00 When Offered: On an irregular basis
Corequisite: None Prerequisites: Two 350-level literature courses Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts CORE: None
Students pursuing honors in French enroll in this course.
Credits: 1.00 Corequisite: None Prerequisites: None Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts CORE: None
Opportunity for individual study in areas not covered by formal course offerings, under the guidance of a member of the faculty.
Credits: variable Corequisite: None Prerequisites: None Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts CORE: None
Human-induced climate change–global warming–is the defining environmental and social issue of our times. That people are dramatically altering the climate is now the resounding consensus in the scientific community. Potential short- and long-term impacts include biodiversity loss, sea-level rise and coastal flooding, more intense storms, threats to human health, and disruptions of freshwater supplies and food security. But while the global community increasingly understands the basic processes driving climate change, and is starting to appreciate the consequences of a warmer world, the coupled social and biophysical dynamics of global warming are complex and the issue remains controversial. This course explores climate-society relationships in industrial and pre-industrial periods, and considers the multifaceted natural and human dimensions of global warming. It also highlights the integrative natural and social science modes of analysis commonly used in the discipline of geography.
Credits: 1.00 Corequisite: None Prerequisites: None Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: No Junior, Senior Area of Inquiry: Social Relations,Inst.& Agents Liberal Arts CORE: None Formerly: GEOG 205
“End of the world” scenarios have been linked to global pandemics, super-volcanoes, artificial intelligence, and melting permafrost. “Is the Planet Doomed” uses these and other examples to study contemporary catastrophism. The course explores arguments that suggest the world may have reached “peak humanity.” Potential mass extinction events arise from the convergence of biological, climatic, economic, technological factors on one hand, and war on the other. The course analyzes these factors using the integrative modes of analysis commonly used in the discipline of geography. And it exposes how geography affects the catastrophic imaginary.
Credits: 1.00 Prerequisites: None Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: No Junior, Senior Area of Inquiry: Social Relations,Inst.& Agents Liberal Arts CORE: None Formerly: GEOG 207
GEOG 211 - Geographies of Nature, Economy, Society
Acquaints students with the approaches and subject matter of human and nature-society geography. It introduces geography’s longstanding concerns with spatial location, place, and nature-society interaction, as studied through ways of knowing that are central to the discipline—spatial representation and analysis, cross-scalar comparisons, integrative synthesis, and the social construction of space and environment. Case studies, drawn from all world regions, illustrate how geographers use these tools and perspectives to clarify such issues as human well-being and inequality, economic and sociocultural globalization, population patterns and processes, human impact on the environment, and sustainable development in the Anthropocene.
Credits: 1.00 Prerequisites: None Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: No Junior, Senior Area of Inquiry: Social Relations,Inst.& Agents Liberal Arts CORE: Global Engagements Formerly: GEOG 111
Provide students with a general understanding of the processes and spatial distribution of the Earth’s primary physical systems and the ways in which humans interact with these systems. Course emphasis is divided into three areas: atmospheric processes, the spatial dynamics of vegetation and soils, and landform development. Students are introduced to the basic physical processes and interactions that operate within each of these categories, with special focus on the ways in which these factors relate to contemporary environmental problems.
Credits: 1.00 Corequisite: None Prerequisites: None Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: No Junior, Senior Area of Inquiry: Natural Sciences & Mathematics Liberal Arts CORE: None Formerly: GEOG 131
Focuses on the theory, function, and application of geographic information systems (GIS). The analytical powers of GIS are rooted in its ability to manage large volumes of geographically referenced data representing both physical and social characteristics. As such, GIS has become an important analytical approach in most subfields of geography. Students begin with an examination of basic mapping concepts, geographic data issues, symbolism, and generalization. Emphasis then shifts to issues in GIS data structure, collection, and input. Once a solid understanding of these GIS foundation issues is achieved, attention turns to the analytical powers and applications of GIS. These topics are reinforced by a series of exercises dealing with local geographic data. Students make use of the ArcGIS geographic information system and involves map digitization, geographic data collection (using global positioning systems, satellite imagery, and aerial photography), database management, and spatial analysis.
Prerequisites: None Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: No First-year Area of Inquiry: Social Relations,Inst.& Agents Liberal Arts CORE: None
Acquaints students with key principles and practices of original scholarly research. First emphasizes the key role in research of a clearly formulated question, one that is significant and workable and is grounded in a conceptual framework drawn from the existing literature. Then focuses on the techniques and rationale of a particular method of research, which will vary from semester to semester. Examples of possible foci include statistical analysis, interviews, community-based and participatory research, content analysis, or the interpretation of historical primary sources. In close consultation with the instructor, students design, carry out, and report on a research project employing that method to answer a question of their own design.
Credits: 1.00 Corequisite: None Prerequisites: None Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: No First-year Area of Inquiry: Social Relations,Inst.& Agents Liberal Arts CORE: None
Mass media is a key set of institutions in modernity that shape our perceptions of the world, with important impacts on what we take to be reality. The media “frames” that structure how media is produced, conveyed, and consumed form the discourses that we use to understand mass politics and culture in our daily lives. This course provides students with the methodological tools to empirically study media frames through content analysis. Content analysis takes the stuff of media, such as music lyrics, news stories, or advertisements, and systematically analyzes the content for the explicit and implicit frames that represent the issues and perspectives conveyed through media. The course provides students hands-on training in content analysis through a series of workshops on content sampling, collection, coding, and analysis that culminate in a final research project. This course meets for the first 7 weeks of the term and may be used to satisfy the 0.50-credit methods requirement for the sociology major.
Credits: 0.50 Crosslisted:SOCI 251 Corequisite: None Prerequisites: None Major/Minor Restrictions: Only Geography, Sociology, Environmental Geography Majors and Minors Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: None Liberal Arts CORE: None
Opportunity for individual study in areas not covered by formal course offerings, under the guidance of a member of the faculty.
Credits: variable Corequisite: None Prerequisites: None Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: Social Relations,Inst.& Agents Liberal Arts CORE: None
GEOG 303 - The Camp: A Global History of Civilian Internment
Reviews a history of civilian internment by analyzing the geographic proliferation of camps throughout the planet. In modern and contemporary history, authoritarian states and democracies alike have developed concentration camps, internment camps, refugee camps, detention camps, and displaced persons camps – in ever increasing numbers. Countries have done so in order to separate and define populations they would or could not assimilate within the political life of the nation state, thereby relegating those populations to an exceptional status instead. To study the geographic spread of camps as technologies for advancing a state of exception, then, is to learn how –and to what extent– human rights have been acknowledged or betrayed in contemporary history.
Corequisite: None Prerequisites: None Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: Natural Sciences & Mathematics Liberal Arts CORE: None
Examines the violent networks of the illicit global economy: from guns and drugs smuggling, to human trafficking and animal poaching among others. Drawing from multiple scholarly traditions, it compares the concrete geographical organization of these illicit networks - that is, where and how they become grounded - and asks the following questions: What are the relationships of these illegal activities to legal circuits of power and profit? In what ways are transnational criminal networks redefining the nature of contemporary violence and the meaning of peace?
Corequisite: None Prerequisites: None Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: No First-year Area of Inquiry: Social Relations,Inst.& Agents Liberal Arts CORE: None
Achieving some degree of happiness is a primary goal for most people. Certainly, a huge industry has emerged in recent years to feed the public’s desire for ways to improve their happiness. There is also a rapidly growing amount of research on the subject. This course starts with an overview of the diverse, multidisciplinary scholarship on factors that may contribute to happiness. But the main goal of the course is to consider themes central to the discipline of geography: how do environmental changes, efforts to achieve sustainable development, and culture affect the geography of happiness? Do people achieve a greater sense of well-being when interacting with wilderness or by exploring nature in their backyards? Does environmental stewardship improve happiness? What roles do attitudes about food and leisure play in how happy people are? Students explore these questions via out-of-class excursions, films, a diverse mix of scholarly and popular press readings, guest speakers, and individual research projects.
Credits: 1.00 Corequisite: None Prerequisites: None Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: No Senior, No First-year Area of Inquiry: Social Relations,Inst.& Agents Liberal Arts CORE: None
GEOG 307 - What’s in your cup? The Geography of what we Drink
What people eat and drink connects them to a global socioecology and a complex exchange of commodities. What’s in your cup? uses our daily consumption of beverages to analyze the social and environmental implications of how people live. From the energy used to boil water for a morning coffee to the biota disturbed by farmers across the world, what we drink may be linked to carbon emissions, water pollution, and public health hazards, all of which have implications for consumers and producers alike. Challenges, such as climate change, limited access to land, and market shifts, often leave farmers vulnerable. But there are also many examples of efforts that empower farmers to live well and care for the land, provide consumers access to ethically produced beverages, and initiatives that promote sustainable development. Using examples from around the world students explore the geography of what people drink.
Credits: 1.00 Corequisite: None Prerequisites: None Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: Social Relations, Inst.& Agents Liberal Arts CORE: None
GEOG 309 - Latin America: Critical Landscapes of Development
Explores the development experience of Latin America through examination of pressing environmental, economic, political, and social issues that currently face the region as a whole and play out differently across the region. The focus is guided by a critical reading of development theory, paying particular attention to Latin American theorizations and empirical experiences, and concern for the subjects, places, and scales that have been excluded from the presumed benefits of development. Mindful that Latin America’s development experience is historically embedded, students examine the transformation of Latin American societies and environments through legacies of conquest and colonialism, processes of globalization and neo-liberalization, dynamics of rural and urban change, changes in gender and race relations, and transformations of political and civil society dynamics. These issues are grounded in case studies drawn from Central America, the Caribbean, Andean countries, the Southern Cone, and Brazil. The course’s point of entry is contemporary environmental crises and the role of natural and human resources in shaping the development experience of the region.
Corequisite: None Prerequisites: None Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: No First-year Area of Inquiry: Social Relations,Inst.& Agents Liberal Arts CORE: Global Engagements
Broadly defined, Geopolitics is the study of “the relationship among politics and geography, demography, and economics, especially with respect to the foreign policy of a nation.” As the study of political geography on a global scale, geopolitics examines the relationship between territories, boundaries, and states in the “closed system” we call planet earth. But geopolitics is more than an academic field. Geopolitical thought has actually instructed states how to relate to one another in the contest for territory, security, and resources. For example, the history of geopolitical analysis is closely connected to – and has often justified – various imperial projects. As a result, this course examines the relation between the development of geopolitical thought on one hand, and geopolitical events on the other. Of particular importance to the relation between theories of geopolitics and the actual geostrategies of states has been the development of conflict on a planetary scale. And so, this course traces that relation through the study of geopolitical thought and practice in the course of imperial struggles in the 19th century, World Wars and the threat of nuclear wars in the 20th century, and new global challenges such as resource wars and environmental security in our own time.
Corequisite: None Prerequisites: None Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: No First-year Area of Inquiry: Social Relations,Inst.& Agents Liberal Arts CORE: None
An exploration of contemporary urban geography and academic writing about the city. It introduces students to the ways in which urban geography has played a role, along with other disciplines that focus on the urban, in understanding cities and the issues that surround them. This includes an examination of how cities are conceived, lived, and represented. The course investigates the following topics: What are the various ways that people create, and attempt to materialize, their geographical imaginations of what they want the city to be? What are the ways in which different social groups make claims on space and place, and how does the scale at which these activities occur have effects? What are the critical questions to ask about urban landscapes today? How would you formulate a research proposal on such topics? The course offers a theoretical and practical framework within which to examine the city as a site of socio-cultural and political-economic transformation. In this framework, students analyze how the state, market, and civil society intersect, and how this has changed over the 20th century in the U.S. and other parts of the world.
Credits: 1.00 Corequisite: None Prerequisites: None Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: No First-year Area of Inquiry: Social Relations,Inst.& Agents Liberal Arts CORE: Global Engagements
Focuses on the historical development and contemporary spatial patterns and processes of American cities. Topics emphasized include the decentralization of people and jobs within urban areas, metropolitan political fragmentation, racial residential segregation, inner-city gentrification, urban public service provision issues, the role of new immigrant groups, and feminist perspectives on urban geography, plus international and interregional comparisons to elicit distinctive characteristics of urbanization in the US.
Credits: 1.00 Corequisite: None Prerequisites: None Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: No First-year Area of Inquiry: Social Relations,Inst.& Agents Liberal Arts CORE: Global Engagements
GEOG 313 - Geographical Political Economy: Asia in Globalization
Contemporary sociocultural and environmental issues cannot be understood without a good grasp of globalizing, yet place-specific political economic contexts in which these issues are embedded. The course aims to prepare students with conceptual and analytical foundations of economic geography with a particular attention to the roles of states, firms, and workers in the increasingly interconnected world. A strong empirical emphasis is given to Asia, although other world regions are addressed throughout the course for comparative and integrative purposes. Questions asked in this course include: what causes territorial economic growth and decline? How do place-specific economic structures influence policies? How are “the economy” and environment interrelated? Does advanced technology make geography irrelevant? Does economic growth produce socio-spatial inequality? In answering these questions, Asia offers a critical empirical arena to test theories and hypotheses, many of which have been developed primarily in the Euro-American contexts.
Credits: 1.00 Corequisite: None Prerequisites: None Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: No First-year Area of Inquiry: Social Relations,Inst.& Agents Liberal Arts CORE: None
We are living in the world of growing uncertainty filled with various “shocks” such as natural disasters, financial crises, and development projects, and more insidious “distress” via resource depletion, excessive industrial specialization, and demographic transitions. This course focuses on how households and communities cope with, resist, adapt to, and challenge these large structural “disturbances” in locally specific and ingenious ways in order to take control and enhance their livelihood opportunities and cultural identities. Case studies are drawn from various parts of Asia, with a particular focus on Japan. Although theoretical foundations of this course are grounded in the literature on sustainable livelihood and community resilience in geography and neighboring fields, it is designed for students with various disciplinary backgrounds and interest in Asia. Students are expected to apply their disciplinary skills and regional knowledge to the course project.
Credits: 1.00 Corequisite: None Prerequisites: None Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: No First-year Area of Inquiry: Social Relations,Inst.& Agents Liberal Arts CORE: None
GEOG 316 - Environmental and Public Health Geographies
Considers patterns of spatial and social distribution of disease and of health and medical resources. Alternative analytical approaches to describing and explaining these patterns of distribution are demonstrated. Selected topics include disease systems and disease ecology, the population analysis of mortality and morbidity, environmental influences on health, and the distribution and accessibility of health resources. Examples are drawn from both contemporary and historical societies throughout the world.
Credits: 1.00 Corequisite: None Prerequisites: None Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: No First-year Area of Inquiry: Social Relations,Inst.& Agents Liberal Arts CORE: Global Engagements
GEOG 318 - International Migration, U.S. Immigration, and Immigrants
Introduces students to approaches to the study of international migration, immigrant assimilation and adjustment, ethnic social and economic stratification, and immigration policy formation and analysis. These topics are explored within the historical and contemporary context of the United States and New York. The class considers theoretical perspectives that have been applied to the study of migration as well as approaches used by sociologists and geographers in empirical analyses of US immigration, immigrant populations, and ethnic relations. These analytical issues are considered in detail for immigrant and ethnic groups within New York State and the New York metropolitan community. Finally, students consider the relationships among patterns of immigration and ethnic relations, cultural change, international relations and transnational linkages, and US immigration policy reform.
Corequisite: None Prerequisites: None Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: Social Relations,Inst.& Agents Liberal Arts CORE: None
Introduces students to major themes and issues in feminist geography, both in the U.S. and globally. Explores how environments shape, and are shaped by, gendered power dynamics in society. Addresses geographic issues from feminist approaches to social justice to advance students’ understandings of the complex relationships between spatiality and power relations. To this end, students work across diverse geographies to explore (1) the social relations underlying geographic problems; (2) the ways in which gender, class, race, sexuality, nationality, and dis/ability intersect in environmental issues; and (3) feminist geographic methods and theories of knowledge production. Students bring a global perspective to the issues by drawing out local-global linkages. Case studies are drawn from North America, Latin America, Africa, Asia, and the Pacific.
Credits: 1.00 Corequisite: None Prerequisites: None Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: No First-year Area of Inquiry: Social Relations,Inst.& Agents Liberal Arts CORE: Global Engagements
With half of the world’s population living in and around cities, the needs of urban-based populations and economies dominate non-urban peoples, places, and habitats worldwide. This course begins with an introduction to political ecology, a body of knowledge combining political economy and cultural ecology. Political economy is the study of how different societies are connected globally, and cultural ecology is the study of the relationship between a society and its natural environment. Although political ecology largely focuses on places and cultures of “pristine” or “native” nature in “other” countries, this course turns to urban settings to explore how people understand urban areas and what their relationship to the environment in these areas is. Case studies of specific places (from small cities in upstate New York to global cities in distant countries) are used to learn about urban political ecological issues through readings, assignments, discussion, and interaction with local/regional experts on urban environmental problems. Students apply their knowledge about urban political ecology both collaboratively, in a final project conducted in a workshop-type setting, and individually, in a final term paper.
Credits: 1.00 Corequisite: None Prerequisites: None Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: No First-year Area of Inquiry: Social Relations,Inst.& Agents Liberal Arts CORE: None
