The course covers climate dynamics and climate variability phenomena and mechanisms, and provides hands-on experience running and analyzing climate models, as well as using dynamical system theory tools.

This course will cover major topics in urban adaptation broadly divided according to concepts, governance, and practices. Concepts will include cross-cutting issues such as equity and justice, limits to adaptation, and the adaptation/mitigation nexus. Governance will span scales from community-led resilience to regional collaboratives to transnational city networks. Practices will delve into leading strategies for cities to adapt to major climate impacts with an emphasis on flooding and heat.

In this seminar we discuss justice and beneficence near and far, as formulated in views of how benefits and burdens should be distributed within the borders of a just society, and as further brought to bear concerning sharing and stewardship to benefit and prevent harm to peoples and generations distant from us in space and time.

This course will showcase how novel technologies have allowed fascinating new insights into key aspects of our environment that are of high societal importance. Students will gain both an understanding of topics such as climate change and air pollution as well as detailed knowledge of the design and underlying principles of environmental instrumentation, especially via the hands-on laboratory sessions.

We will examine climate migration through selected case studies in climate hotspots in the Sahel and the Pacific Islands, focusing on emerging migration trends: 1) cross-border migration, 2) internal migration, and 3) urban-to-rural migration. Additionally, we will explore holistic views of displacement and risk overlaps, including areas where conflict and climate change intersect.

This course will show how "big data" can be used to understand and address some of the most important social and economic problems of our time.

This class will examine the global food system and how it can meet the caloric needs of a growing population with higher caloric demands.

Studies contemporary Russian poetic practice with an emphasis on very recent work. Interrogates poetry’s capacity to respond to ongoing crises, including the cultural freedoms and economic chaos of the 1990s, the COVID pandemic, climate catastrophe, and the Russo-Ukraine war. Recurring themes are border crossings (in language, temporalities, genre, and geography); innovations in form and self-representation; poetry performance and visual display; and the changing representations of emotion and mind.

Auto is undergoing a technological revolution with the shift to electric vehicles (EVs) and the development of autonomous vehicles.  Decarbonizing private transportation is essential to achieving climate goals, with transportation overall representing 28% of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.  EV sales are now growing rapidly: in 2022, battery electric vehicles (EVs) represented about 22% of new vehicle sales in China, 15% in the EU and 5% in the U.S. Forecasts suggest EVs will represent close to 50% of new vehicle sales in the U.S. by 2030 and higher in China and Europe. The EV transition has far-reaching repercussions from emissions to macroeconomic impacts to national security and poses substantial challenges in the rapid development of new supply chains.  In this seminar, we will study the intersection of EVs, the energy transition, environmental science, policy, and economics. The current pace of change is dramatic but has roots going back 50 years to early U.S. environmental regulation and efforts to reduce dependency on Middle East oil; auto has been a critical element in trade policy back to the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Policy is pivotal today, in the U.S. and overseas, in terms of determining the pace of EV adoption, how supply chains develop, and how fast they evolve.  The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (IRA) enables faster EV adoption through tax credits for EV production and purchases.  Technological progress, especially in battery technology, will be critical in the path forward.  We will analyze a range of EV issues including those highlighted above as well as charging, health impacts, equity, and international market differences. 

The purpose of this course is to introduce the topic of environmental justice as it relates to public health. It has been developed to be accessible to a broad audience including those with backgrounds in environmental health, epidemiology, basic sciences, social and behavioral sciences, and health policy. 

The class will argue for the necessity of studying theories of justice, inequality, and structural violence along with climate science, policy, and international diplomacy. In our search for climate justice, the class will trace various forms of climate activism within the history of environmental movements, explore non-Western forms of knowledge as key critiques and logics of action, and evaluate concrete suggestions for radical reform. We will discuss how climate justice as a framework of concern is both universal and specific, and we will critically engage ideas of justice at different scales, from the local to the global, with careful attention to context. We will ultimately ask what new kinds of practices, knowledges, and collaborations are necessary to build more just and responsible relationships between people and the nonhuman world, and with each other.

This course will explore the costs, politics, and solutions in our global food system, with a focus on the United States.