Sustainability Fall 2016 Course Selections
Need to register for classes for Fall 2016? We’ve got a list of all sustainability related courses at The New School prepared for you.
Sustainability
Corporate Sustainability and Social Responsibility
Judith AlbertCRN 5403NSPE – Milano (graduate)This course offers students an opportunity to understand the spectrum of varied corporate stances on the issue of social responsibility, the evolution of the concept of CSR, international variation in CSR philosophy, and current research on the influence and possible future directions of CSR. Students explore and understand theories of Corporate Social Responsibility, analyze motivations for and effectiveness of CSR using those theory frameworks, and review perspectives on the relationship of CSR to current social and economic issues.
Leadership for Sustainability and Environmental Policy
Hilary SemelCRN 4633NSPE – Milano – graduateSustainability has been elevated to a key driver for business today. A number of organizations, large and small, are now creating and implementing strategies that address critical environmental and social issues while delivering value to a range of stakeholders. The main objectives of this course are twofold. First, we explore the contextual framework for sustainability leadership in terms of policy, environmental and social trends, stakeholder expectations, and competitiveness. Second, we explore the practical tools, technologies, tactics, and communication necessary to lead a robust strategy for sustainability.
Green Roof Ecology
Timon McPhearsonCRN 7406SPE- Environmental Studies (undergraduate)This course, the first in a two-semester suite, links urban ecology, urban agricultural development, and urban design through a civic engagement project at a rooftop farm. We examine specific ecological and environmental aspects of urban agriculture and learn urban field ecology and participatory research design techniques, connect scientific knowledge with design skills as we study urban wildlife needs and urban rooftop ecology.
Environment
Principles of Environmental Science
Konstantine RoutosCRN 4634MilanoThis course will introduce students to the fundamental scientific, technical, and analytical issues relating to environmental studies, providing a strong foundation so they can be conversant in the multidisciplinary environmental that is sustainability management. At the same time, students will develop the communications skills necessary to operate successfully in this space.
Global Climate Change and Health: Risks and Responses
Ivan RamirezCRN 7484NSPE –Milano (graduate, undergrads require permission from instructor)In this seminar course, students will gain foundational knowledge to understand: the impacts of weather and climate on human health, conceptual models and methods of risk and vulnerability assessment, and responses and climate capacity building in the public health sector, including adaptation strategies and the co-benefits of greenhouse gas mitigation.
Climate and Society
Ivan RamirezCRN 6002Lang (undergraduate)This interdisciplinary course is designed to introduce students to the many facets of the climate system, the broad range of climate and ocean issues, and impacts that affect society and ecosystems at global and local scales. Given the growing concern about global climate change, it is intended to provide a baseline understanding of: climate science; climate interactions and impacts with weather, people and ecosystems; and societal responses to climate vulnerability, including adaptation and resilience building.
GIS for International Crises, Development, and the Environment
Stephen MettsCRN 4147NSPE – Milano (graduate)This course provides an introduction to desktop and web-based GIS software via real-world scenarios and research questions in humanitarian relief, international development, and environmental issues. In particular, students will learn to analyze, map, and publish spatial information using powerful GIS tools. Students will develop skills in web and paper-based cartography, collaborative online mapping, spatial data analysis, mobile phone data collection, and using and manipulating satellite and aerial imagery.
Biology, Art, and Social Justice
Katayoun ChamanyCNR 7249Lang – (undergraduate)In this course we will explore how artists and scientists are working together to create news ways of knowing and understanding the world we live in. We will explore how science and art are perceptual practices that involve inquiry, creativity, interpretation, and personal expression. We will analyze articles, artist interviews and exhibits, and scientific summaries focused on new biotechnologies and their impact on food, agriculture, and human identity.
Genomes, Populations and Identities
Katayoun ChamanyCNR 7409Lang – (undergraduate)This course reviews the history and science behind the human genome project (HGP), microbiome, virome, and other genomes alongside their ethical, legal, and social dimensions. Course discussions review population studies and evolution; how genetics can inform or challenge how people view individuals and communities; and the role that social, natural, and built environments contribute to individual and community differences.
A World of Disasters: Famine, Plague, and Crisis in Global History
Aaron JakesCRN 7017Lang (undergraduate)This course seeks to chart a global history of the modern era by way of it famines, plagues, disasters, and crises. Through an episodic and thematic reading of eco-social theory, history, literature, and film we will ask how these unwelcome disruptions have shaped issues including the dynamics of global capitalism, the workings of government, the role of technology and expertise, and the meaning of nature.
Power and Biology: The Global South and the History of Science
Laura PalermoCRN 4586Lang (undergrad)This seminar approaches the history of science from the perspective of the global margins. We will study the contextual connections between biological research, imperialism and postcolonial societies. We will analyze case studies from the history of Eugenics and racism, military research, sexually transmitted diseases and the social and environmental impact of science in the Global South. The course places special emphasis on historical case studies from Latin America and Africa.
Introduction to Urban Environmental Health
Ivan RamirezCRN 4589Lang (undergrad)In this course, we will look at a broad range of factors affecting public health in urban environments. In 2009, for the first time in human history, more than half of the world's population resides in urban areas. Urban growth has outpaced the ability of governments to build essential infrastructures, and one in three urban dwellers lives in slums or informal settlements. The pace of urbanization results in built and social environments that place stress on human immune systems, increase exposures to industrial toxins, and present sanitation challenges. In addition, the effects of climate change have led to concerns about renewed incidence of infectious diseases that disproportionately affect urban populations.
Chemistry of the Environment
Bhawani VenkataramanCRN 7428Lang (undergrad)This course will discuss fundamental chemistry concepts to explain the causes of environmental challenges and to offer possible solutions and policies to address them. Topics that will be explored include (i) water quality and access to safe drinking water, (ii) chemical energy and fossil fuels, and (iii) polymers, plastics and "green" alternatives.
Community / Social Justice
The Production of Space
Miguel Robles-DuranCRN 7526Parsons Design Strategies (undergrad and grad) Non majors with restrictionsThis course is based on a critical reading of two seminal urban theory texts, The Production of Space by Henri Lefebvre and Social Justice & the City by David Harvey. The reading and discussion of both texts will be framed around the conditions of the contemporary urban crisis and its relationship to the capitalist/neoliberal mode of production. The topics of discussion include uneven urban development, gentrification, spatial polarization, citizen displacement, capital accumulation, social and spatial justice, daily life and possible alternative systems of urbanization.
Community Development Finance Lab 1
Kevin McQueenCRN 4643NSPE – Milano (graduate / undergrad)The Lab examines community capital markets through real-world projects and produces working tools, such as organizations can use every day. The course consists of three components: (1) the Pro-Bono consulting clinic that allows students to work in partnership with community based organizations to conduct feasibility studies and business plans for their community economic development projects, (2) seminars with community development finance experts where students learn about particular issues and techniques as well as are provided with networking opportunities, (3) workshops to build technical skills. This is the 1st part to a two-semester Community Development Finance Lab course sequence. Students must take Community Development Finance Lab II NURP6011 in the spring semester.
Telling Immigrant Stories
John RudolphCRN 6226NSPE – Milano (undergrad / grad)This course, a collaborative workshop, provides students whose studies focus on media, journalism, international affairs, urban issues, food and the environment an opportunity to use journalism to explore and tell stories that illuminate the lives of immigrants in New York City. Using a variety of media - audio, video, text, multi-media - students will report stories for the Feet in 2 Worlds website (Fi2W.org) and for Fi2W's partners in community, ethnic and mainstream media.
Spectacular Cities
Scott SalmonCRN 7098Lang (undergrad)In the late 1960s Guy Debord began to develop the concept of the 'spectacle' to refer to a new stage in the development of capitalist urbanization. In recent decades we have witnessed the emergence of dramatically new forms of urban spectacle reflecting the growing significance of symbolic economies - associated with finance, media, tourism, heritage, gentrification and, above all consumerism. Taking Debord's work as a departure point, this course will chart the rise of 'spectacular cities' - exploring both cause and consequence through a focus on a variety of sites across the globe.
Food Fight! The Role of Food Advocacy and Socio-political Communication
Stefani BardinCRN 3370Food Studies (grad / undergrad?)The importance of food in popular culture is evident in media such as television shows, films, and blogs. Complex issues such as hunger and food justice, health and obesity, locavorism, biotechnological influences, fair trade, ethical consumption, and sustainability are slowly entering the conversation about food in contemporary media outlets. This course examines the role food plays in communication from semiotic and cultural studies points of view, then explores food as a focus of social, political, and environmental debates. It discusses food and food advocacy content generators and consider effective communication strategies for food-related activism.
Elements of Finance
Charles AllisonCRN 4811NSPE – Milano (graduate)Elements of Finance and Capital Markets ("EOF") addresses the animated debate being carried on in environmental policy and sustainability management, international affairs, nonprofit management, organizational change management, global economic development and urban policy about how to arrive at a variety of decision points that support job growth, business retention, and development on local, regional, national and international levels.
Environmental Justice: Race Class and the Environment
Ana BaptistaCRN 5974NSPE – Milano (graduate)This course will focus on a critical exploration of the origins of and solutions to environmental racism and injustice. The class includes examination of the evolution of the Environmental Justice Movement, the political economy of environmental inequalities, environmental history and practices, institutionalized racism and urban development patterns that contribute to the manifestation of unjust environmental conditions in low income and communities of color in the United States and considers the critical question: What can be done to correct these inequalities?
Globalized Labor
Scott MartinCRN 7575NSPE – Milano (graduate)This course will examine evidence on shifting practice and hotly contested debates on collective action frames and policy ways forward, integrating a focus on global and transnational levels of action and policy debates with discussion of comparative and contrasting national perspectives and "models" within and across the global North and South. We will explore how contemporary systems of national labor regulation and traditional patterns of labor organizing have been undermined by precarious work and informality woven within a flexible, global capitalism increasing shorn of protections.
Infrastructure for the New Social Compact
William MorrishCRN 4830NSPE –Milano (Graduate)This course will address design and social science research and practice on urban infrastructure for the last 20 years in the context of cities facing the root shock of Hurricane's Sandy and Katrina, and the momentum of massive human migration into cities like Lagos, Nigeria strip away the everyday veneer of social and ecology safety that many of us take for granted. Hyper urban situations not only take lives and force others into long term daily suffering; they reveal society's negligence to recognize the significance of maintaining and updating infrastructure as basic necessity to daily civil society operations.
Introduction to Social Entrepreneurship
Dennis DerryckCRN 4666NSPE – Milano (graduate)This course explores innovative, entrepreneurial approaches that address social problems within the United States and internationally and across diverse domains, such as education, economic development, the environment, health, and human rights. The course introduces students to key concepts associated with social innovation and social entrepreneurship and the steps in the entrepreneurial process: identifying an opportunity or social need, formulating a strategy to address the social problem, mobilizing resources and partners, managing growth, tracking results, and maximizing impact.
Community Activism and Development
Jean GardnerCRN 6379Parsons Constructed Environments (undergraduate and graduate)This course introduces you to forces shaping your world, their intended consequences and those not intended. You will learn skills that you can use anywhere you work or live. You will learn what questions you should ask when confronted with an unfamiliar situation; how to explore an unknown geographical area; How to recognize signs of change; who the stakeholders are in the change and who wants the place where they live to remain the same. What signs do you see of a resilient, equitable future? How can you contribute to making cities and communities more ecologically sound and socially just?
Biology, Bodies and Binaries: Intersections of Feminism and Ecology
Katinka Maria Wijsman
CRN: 8071Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts: Poltical ScienceThis course will focus on the intersections between feminism and environmental justice. Using a lens which acknowledges the connections between sexism, racism, class exploitation, and environmental destruction, the class will analyze how the same paradigms and historical inequalities devalue both 'women' and 'nature', leading to the oppression and denigration of both. We will use feminist and queer theory to interrogate binary categories such as natural/unnatural, nature/culture, normal/abnormal as they relate to our understanding of "the environment". We will examine how racism and colonization shape the environments in which we live. As such, this course will critique modern science, technology and political systems; but we will also explore what solutions to environmental problems from a feminist perspective might look like. How can we be activists for the many environments we care for - including forests, waterways, communities, and our own bodies - in ways that radically alter patriarchal norms? In this course we will survey several key transnational environmental topics and case studies such as climate change, food justice, water justice, toxic chemicals and international development from feminist perspectives. Course materials will include academic and activist texts as well as fiction and film.
Invisible Hunger: Food Insecurity and Food Banks
Bea BanuSchools of Public Engagement, Food StudiesFood insecurity is a widespread but often invisible problem among Americans, New Yorkers, and even students at The New School. This lecture series, organized in collaboration with the Food Bank for New York City, focuses on food insecurity in the urban context, reflecting on the systems and social hierarchies that affect it, as well as the impact of food policy and politics on urban environments and population health. Participating in a transformative educational experience grounded in the tenets of social justice, students will acquire greater awareness of the implications and pervasiveness of food insecurity. Besides reflections and research on the lecture topics, students will also be required to become familiar with the practical functioning of relief organizations through participation and service in The New School Food Pantry, recently launched to address this issue.
Design
Sustainable Business Models
Various faculty (9 sections)Parsons Strategic Design (undergraduate and graduate) Non Majors with restrictionsThis course develops students' technical and practical abilities, capabilities, and competencies to innovate in order to commercialize and capitalize on value-creative ideas and solutions in the areas of sustainable and service design. It will engage students in development of real-life innovation implementation and operations models, strategies, and executions. The seminar will focus on the development of design innovation, business modeling and execution design capabilities, and competencies with reflection, coaching, mentoring, and organizational development methodologies.
Fashion Materiality
Titania InglisCRN 3325Parsons Fashion Design (undergraduate)This course offers students an opportunity to explore a variety of media or processes applicable to be utilized within fashion design contexts. Technical explorations and material manipulations will be encouraged and could range from traditional solutions around contemporary concepts such as design endurance, the creation of new fabrication solutions, or the use of blended technology. Students will be encouraged to explore a range of design and technical processes in order to come up with creative material solutions that could be resolved as 3D fashion products or 2D original and innovative fabrications.
Fashion Materiality: Denim
Jack BurnsCRN 5754Parsons Fashion Design (undergraduate)This course offers students an opportunity to explore a variety of media or processes applicable to be utilized within fashion design contexts, with a focus on Denim. Technical explorations and material manipulations will be encouraged and could range from traditional solutions around contemporary concepts such as design endurance, the creation of new fabrication solutions, or the use of blended technology. Students will be encouraged to explore a range of design and technical processes in order to come up with creative material solutions that could be resolved as 3D fashion products or 2D original and innovative fabrications.
Zero Waste Garment
Titania InglisCRN 4038Parsons Fashion Design (undergraduate)This course presents a new way of exploiting and building upon the students' existing fashion design and patternmaking skills with focus on sustainability in fashion design. It introduces the students to designing a garment without creating fabric waste in the process. In designing and producing a zero-waste garment, the students will develop a deeper understanding of the relationships between cloth, fashion design, patternmaking and draping, and in a broader sense, the connections between material, design process and final product, and the broader context in which these connections exist.
Poetics of Design
Robert KirkbrideCRN 6106Parsons Constructed EnvironmentsMust sustainability be ugly? Is beauty superficial? Are aesthetics and ethics at opposite poles or two sides of the same coin? This interdisciplinary course examines poetics at its root, the Greek word poiein (to make). As a poem is breathed to life through performance, so is an artifact brought to life through its use, its inhabitation. From long tradition, material craft and the craft of thought have been mutually influential. More recently, however, the perception that we make our own thoughts from any and all available materials - poems, paintings, cities and dreams - has yielded to a passive view that thoughts are things we simply have.
Theory of Urban Form
Victoria MarshallCRN 5943Parsons Architecture (graduate, undergrad)Theory of Urban Form examines the various ways architects have theorized their role in relation to the design of cities over the past four decades. Additionally we have seen an awakening of environmental consciousness as well as the emergence of a multiplicity of diverse urban subjectivities around civil rights struggles around race, gender, ethnicity and sexuality. While we will focus on the last forty years, contemporary theories will be examined in relation to intellectual genealogies and historical examples and practices reaching deeper into the past.
Environmental Design
Kent Hikida / Nadia ElrokhsyCRN 2388 / CRN 4955Parsons Interior Design (undergraduate)This course addresses the principles, process and practice of environmental design, at the interior design scale. It looks at the links between environmental and formal design, and the effect of that developing connection on the future of design theory and practice. It does this through lectures, exams, studio work, and site visits.
Special Topics in Strategic Design and Management
Jean Gardner / Franz Christian Schneider / Raz GodelnikCRN 5890 / CRN 5290 / CRN 6314Parsons Design Strategies (undergraduate)Special topics in Strategic Design and Management that address emerging trends, practices and opportunities. Section A - "DESIGN AND NATURE / Section B - "NEW MEDIA FOR MARKET ENGAGEMENT / Section C - "VISUALIZING FINANCE / Section D - "WORKER COOPERATIVES
Mind and Body in Nature and Design
Jean GardnerCRN 6378Parsons Constructed Environments (undergraduate)In this course students will explore the following key questions: What is the relation between your playing and your designing? How does your body and your mind relate to nature? Is this a cultural relationship or an instinctual one? How do nature and culture affect the designs you make? You will have opportunities to explore these questions through play in this class. Your starting point is your own immediate experiences. You will learn also how what you know how to do informs what you design to make the world more sustainable and resilient.
Industrial Design History
Michelle JacksonCRN 6117Parsons – Industrial Design (graduate) MFA Industrial Design majors onlyStudents develop a critical future-oriented understanding of the history of product and industrial design through many lenses, including socio-technological innovation, economics, business, ethics, gender, scale of production, efficiency, labor, human-centered design, systems thinking, ecological impact, engineering, science, and cultural expression. Readings and lectures expose students to multiple perspectives and encourage them to challenge historical assumptions.
Business Design and Planning
Margaret Bishop / Kaleem Kamboj7 sectionsParsons Design & Management (undergraduate) Majors onlyThis course introduces system dynamics in the context of sustainable design of the operations of a business. Sourcing materials, resource allocation and post-production impacts are analyzed as elements that contribute to the overall economic, social and environmental footprint of a product or service. Students apply the insights and methodologies gained in this course by developing operational plans that propose innovative and sustainable alternatives to familiar business practices.
Architecture Design Studio 3
Nicholas BrinenCRN 6092Parsons Architectural Design (undergraduate) Majors onlyDesign Studio 3 focuses on the integration of environmental systems and architecture, where the design of a building is also the design of how it provides its occupants levels of comfort. The program for the semester-long investigation is Housing; this studio will use housing typologies as the lens for understanding issues of sustainable living systems. How can architecture itself be used to provide positive living environments while reducing energy consumption? This question will be investigated in the studio while engaging sustainable design strategies for Housing.
Design Studio 3
Kimberly Ackert / David LevenCRN 5566 / CRN 5927Parsons Architecture (grad / undergrad)This studio course will ask students to speculate about the complex relationship between building and the environment, with an emphasis on how issues of sustainability can be used as a catalyst for creatively rethinking conventional notions of enclosure, tectonics, and program. Assuming that the constructed and the organic are mutually imbricated systems, the course will investigate the emergent possibilities arising from new interfaces between the architectural and the 'natural'.
Materials & Performance
Emily AbruzzoCRN 3924Parsons – Interior Design (graduate, non majors with restrictions)This course is an intensive research seminar into materials in design, from the structural to the decorative, as viewed through the critical lens of sustainability. Part lecture, part research lab, and part field work, this course gives an overview of the role of materials in the formation and execution of spatial concept. Throughout the semester, relationships between material, performance and use are established and evaluated within a practice of committed sustainability.
Clothes As Material Memory - Sustainable Fashion
Francesca GranataCRN 7441Parsons Fashion (graduate / undergrad)This seminar provides a theoretical framework to think about issues of sustainability in fashion as they are articulated in our changing relations to materiality and the physical objects that surround us. Reconnecting with the materiality of clothes, as both producers and consumers, points towards a slowing down of the accelerated cycles of consumption and discard promoted by current fashion models. The seminar addresses the historically shifting meanings and values of clothes.
Histories and Theories of Sustainable Design
TBDCRN 7596 (graduate)Parsons – Constructed EnvironmentsThis seminar will explore how we might construct a conceptual framework for understanding the complex questions that "sustainability" raises for the design professions, and for the study of Design History and Theory today. If "sustainability" is seen as a limit identified with protecting nature, with the goals of preservation and minimal intervention, does it stand in opposition to architecture as an instrument of development? How can the values of environmentalism and "sustainability" be integrated into the ways in which designers think?
Economics and Ethics of Sustainable Design
TBDCRN 1654 (undergraduate. Non-design strategy students need permission)ParsonsThis course introduces students to the multiple meanings of sustainability for those in design and in business, including environmental stewardship as well as organizational, economic, and technological sustainability. Students consider the various pressures that globalization exerts on these multiple ideals of sustainability, and learn what kinds of structures, standards and (self-) regulations designers and industries may use to define and monitor their relation to these ideals. Students read texts on the cultural, technological, and business issues involved in sustaining growth and innovation, and explore the economic and ecological implications of "business as usual," in order to begin conceptualizing alternatives to traditional business practices.
Sustainable Systems
Many faculty options, numerous sectionsParsons (undergraduate)This course provides students an opportunity to acquire a foundational understanding of the scientific and social issues related to the design of resilient urban futures. An understanding of the constraints, challenges, and opportunities presented by the need to design products, systems, and services that are more socially, environmentally and economically resilient is at the core of a Parsons education. This course is where that work begins.
Environmental Technology: Architecture and Energy
Andreas BenzingCRN 6133Parsons (architecture majors only)Architecture and Energy introduces environmental principles and approaches to energy efficient design as they relate to the built environment. The class will prepare students to understand their physical environment: how elements in the built environment interact to modify both space and climate. This course introduces high performance building design concepts. It examines basic physical principles (heat transfer and storage), thermal comfort factors (air temperature, surface temperature, air movement and relative humidity), and design concepts regarding the site and the climate.
Environmental Technology 1: Lecture
David WhiteCRN 3394Parsons Constructed Environments (grad and undergrad) Majors onlyThis course introduces the fundamentals of energy and environmental management in buildings. Students will develop a conceptual, practical, and experiential knowledge of how the physical aspects of a building mediate between occupants and the elements to make a habitable environment. Course content includes an overview of green building, microclimates, thermal and visual comfort, solar geometry from global and building perspectives, heat transfer and storage mechanisms, thermal properties of materials, building envelope heat transfer, ventilative heat transfer, moisture and vapor control, daylighting, artificial lighting, passive cooling, and mechanical systems.
History and Theory of Temporary Environments
Ioanna TheocharopoulouCRN 6158Parsons (undergraduate)This course will consider history and theory of temporary environments from around the world with the aim of opening up design possibilities and investigating these considerable biases and challenges in our history, our practices, our thinking, and our institutions. Throughout the semester, as a group and individually, we will address the following question: how might a focus on temporary environments reveal new opportunities for thinking, writing, designing, and building that are more agile, more sustainable, and more just?
Photo Concepts: Environment
Arlene CollinsCRN 7327Parsons (undergraduate)This course provides students with a broad perspective on the histories of landscape photography, focusing on the environment as subject. The role of photography is considered within contemporary themes such as environmentalism, sustainability, and urban planning. Students explore the artist's engagement with the environment through performance, sculpture and photography. Topics include the survey of land art, the environment through landscape and environmental photography, artists' writings about the environment, and site-specific installations. This course is part of a suite of electives designed to introduce students to major concepts present within the field of contemporary photography.
Environmental Technology 1: Lecture
David WhiteCRN 3394Parsons (graduate architecture / lighting design majors only)This course introduces the fundamentals of energy and environmental management in buildings. Students will develop a conceptual, practical, and experiential knowledge of how the physical aspects of a building mediate between occupants and the elements to make a habitable environment. Course content includes an overview of green building, microclimates, thermal and visual comfort, solar geometry from global and building perspectives, heat transfer and storage mechanisms, thermal properties of materials, building envelope heat transfer, ventilative heat transfer, moisture and vapor control, daylighting, artificial lighting, passive cooling, and mechanical systems.
Policy / Politics
Post Human Politics
Rafi YouattCRN 6948NSSRThis course surveys a series of challenges to liberal humanism, which tend to get loosely grouped under post-humanism. We start with a short set of readings about how the human is politically defined in the current international landscape. The rest of the course considers a series of challenges to humanism in practice and theory, ranging from new materialisms to interspecies perspectives, from cyborg citizenship to animal rights, focusing on how these emergent ideas and practices are changing the political.
Making Sausage: Policy for Food Systems, Environment, and Design
Thomas ForsterCRN 6958Food Studies (grad / undergrad)Food and environmental activists and designers can have a positive impact on the lives of people, places and neighborhoods. But to have lasting impact on larger systems that define cities and regions, countries or global communities, policy is key.
Urban Food Systems
TBDCRN 5949Food Studies (undergrad)In this course, the concept of sustainable urban food systems is explored from farm to fork. Topics discussed include community food security; disparities in access to food; and the social, political, economic, and environmental dimensions of food production, distribution, and marketing for contemporary city dwellers.
Climate Change and Cities
TBDCRN 6577NSPE –Milano (graduate)Climate change is altering the ways our cities are planned and managed; affecting more than half the world's households and most firms. United Nations estimates that three billion people will be added to cities by 2050, predominantly in slums of Africa and Asia. In this course students learn about this critical global environmental challenge and explore city responses to climate change. The focus is on familiarizing the students with practical applications of frameworks for city climate risk assessment. The course provides an introduction to the importance of climate science, the tools to unpacking urban risks, adaptation and mitigation mechanism, and policy options for urban sectors like energy and transport, and their system-wide interactions through land use and governance.
Advocacy and Global Governance
Thomas KruseCRN 7577NSPE – Milano (graduate)In struggles for justice, movements, communities and organizations increasingly have to deal with global threats, rules, institutions and corporations, and operate across international boundaries. The international advocacy campaign - a concerted, strategic effort at changing frames, minds, rules, practices and ultimately power relations - has become a vital tool in these struggles for justice. Global Advocacy is a practitioners' course on international advocacy campaigns. Through case studies, we will explore how campaigns or advocacy efforts are built in relation to specific historical contexts, political processes and social movements; how problems are framed, objectives set, and strategy and tactics forged; how learning happens as campaigns evolve; and both how and why international campaigns succeed or fail in securing their change objectives.
African Cities
Gulelat KebedeCRN 5977NSPE – Milano (graduate)Africa is the most rapidly urbanizing region of this century. By 2030 Africa's urban population will exceed urban Latin America and Urban Europe. The purpose of this course is to expose students to the key issues, challenges and opportunities African cities and urbanization are facing, and the policy choices and strategies that are available to them to turn urbanization into a real force of inclusive economic growth and sustainable development.
Environmental Economics
David O’ConnorCRN 7540NSPE – Milano (Graduate)Write-up TBD
International Trade
Jamee MoududCRN 5494NSSR Economics (graduate)This course deals with a comparison of theories of international trade in neoclassical economics and classical political economy, economic policy and international trade, and the political economy of economic policy – focusing in particular on state-business relations and the ways in which political power struggles shape the nature of policy outcomes including global outsourcing. This section will include an analysis of the relationship between law and power and the impact of this nexus on export promotion and domestic social policies while the final section deals investigates the links between environmental policy, free trade, law, and power.Political Economy of the CityJeff SmithCRN 6340NSPE – Milano (undergrad / grad)This course explores the forces that have worked to make cities what they are today. We look at the tension between politics and economics, and the importance of the physical and spatial aspects of the city. Why have some cities continued to grow while others have declined? What are the common issues among them? This course takes US cities as a starting point while recognizing that we are all operating in an international context and that many of the critical issues facing cities today are global in nature-climate change, inequality, the privatization of public space.