Spring 2021
INTL ST 189
Global Pandemics
Course description:
The course draws connections between public health, globalization, and environmental governance, including examination of the social conditions that drive the emergence of infectious diseases with pandemic potential, and the social relations of gender, ethnicity, and class that render some groups more vulnerable than others to infection and aggravation of their health condition.We will examine the history and politics of plague, smallpox, malaria, cholera, influenza, HIV, SARS and COVID–19. Students will be encouraged to revisit their own experiences during the current pandemic through an exercise that reveals how differences we embody (in terms of gender, race/ethnicity, etc.) inform how we come to understand pandemic diseases, so that students can comprehend firsthand how such problems of public health are not naturally given but socially constructed.The goals of this course are for students to learn about global history and public health from interdisciplinary perspectives in the social sciences; develop more nuanced understandings of infectious diseases and their relations with social, economic, and political issues; improve reading and writing skills; and cultivate critical thinking on contemporary topics.
Fall 2020
INTL ST 106B
The Global Food Environment
(Global Food)
This interdisciplinary upper-division course on the Global Food Environment covers ten weekly themes: (1) globalizing food culture, (2) global hunger & obesity, (3) food security, food justice, and food sovereignty, (4) supermarketization and food deserts, (5) food empires and alternative food networks, (6) green revolution and agroecology, (7) Malthus, Marx & Eco-Modernism, (8) land and labor struggles in the food system, (9) food/farming and global health, and (10) food/farming and climate change. The central goal of the course is for students to learn about the main characteristics, problems, and proposed solutions to issues of food production, processing, distribution, and consumption in the world today, and develop critical thinking about issues of food, health, environment and globalization. Additional goals are for students to improve their skills in reading, writing, discussion, and creativity through discussion activities, show & tell assignments, reading quizzes, and a final essay.
Winter 2020
INTL ST 179A
Post-Socialist Transformations
(Post-Socialism)
Course description:
While the 20th century was marked by socialist revolutions and the Cold War, our current century is shaped by many post-socialist transformations all around the world. In this interdisciplinary course, we focus on Russia, China, and Tanzania to examine the living legacies of socialism in these countries, and the complex ways they are transforming in recent decades. We begin clarifying key concepts, such as capitalism, socialism and post- socialism. Then we study the process of privatization and commodification (that is, creating market relations) across various fields, and the social struggles associated with these transformations. These focus especially on (1) land, food, and farming; (2) labor, housing, and industries; and (3) culture, gender, and the environment. We draw upon readings in history, political economy, anthropology, geography, agrarian studies, development studies, gender studies, environmental studies, and other fields to study not only national politics and economics, but also the personal and cultural dimensions of these post-socialist transformations, and the social struggles and resistance associated with them.
The goals of this course are for students to learn about contemporary history, political economy, geography, and interdisciplinary social sciences from a global perspective; develop more nuanced understandings of modern political categories; improve reading and writing skills; and cultivate critical thinking on contemporary topics.
This upper-division elective course has no prerequisites, but students may benefit most if they already have a basic grasp of critical social theory, political economy, and some familiarity or strong interest in non-Western history.