Fall 2021: Climates
Select a course below to learn more about how it relates to this semester's theme of Climates.
** Denotes Theme Semester Course Development Grant Recipients
Instructor: Deena Isom, Assistant Professor
This course explores American racial climates through an investigation of whiteness.
Critical studies of whiteness aim to understand how whiteness is socially constructed
and experienced in order to help dismantle white supremacy.Studies of whiteness consider
how race is experienced by white people. It explores how they consciously and unconsciously
perpetuate institutional racism and how this not only devastates communities of Color
but also perpetuates the oppression of most white people along the lines of class
and gender.
Instructor: Drucilla Barker, Professor
This course interrogates the relationships between globalization, colonialism, capitalism,
and industrialization. They are all interrelated causes of climate change. The wellbeing
of women, understood from an intersectional perspective, is a central theme of the
course. Women are at the center of climate change, both as victims and as resisters.
Instructor: Anna House, Assistant Professor, Art History
This course examines art in northern Europe c. 1400-1600, a period in which artists
turned a curious eye to their rapidly changing world: from the dramatic cooling of
the """"Little Ice Age,"""" to the shifting seasons immortalized in the miniatures
of a nobleman's Book of Hours, to the sprawling forests and cloud formations that
inspired the first independent landscape paintings.
Instructor: Joshua Stone, Assistant Professor
In Principles of Ecology we examine the underlying drivers of ecological diversity
and population dynamics. Climate and climate change are some of the largest drivers
of those changes, and throughout this course we will be examining how climate has
and will continue to shape Earth's ecosystems.
Instructor: Carol Boggs, Professor
Climate, defined as long-term environmental temperature and moisture, is one determinant
of the distribution and abundance of organisms. Altered climates, either through changing
land use or atmospheric conditions, are a major driver of species and population endangerment.
Policy climate also plays a large role in constraining or encouraging specific solutions
to such endangerment. This course addresses the causes of and solutions to species
and population endangerment, in the context of climates.
Instructor: Andrew Greytak, Associate Professor
Chem 542L fits into the Climates theme as we do several experiments - measurement
of mid-IR absorption of HCl and CO2 gases in the lab, and near-IR absorption of O2
in the atmosphere - that are relevant to the physical climate on earth (and other
planets). Recitations provide an opportunity to discuss relationships between spectroscopy
and climate, to discuss individuals who made pertinent discoveries (including women
and underrepresented minorities), and to draw connections to other theme semester
courses.
Instructor: John Ferry, Professor
Material covered in this course includes the chemistry that drives the modern makeup
of the atmosphere and oceans, as well as the environmental fate of anthropogenic chemicals.
Instructor: Deena Isom, Assistant Professor
This course explores inequitable climates through the lens of justice.
Instructor: John Purfield
The composition process is indivisible from and coproductive with the material conditions
of our environment and our climate. This course will investigate current climatological
exigencies on local and global scales while practicing writing as a mode of ecological
understanding and intervention. Students will develop their own understanding of the
Anthropocene and their place within an era defined by anthropogenic damage at nearly
every level of the earth's environmental spheres. Students will compose in various
genres to study, understand, and ultimately intervene in a climatological issue of
their choosing.
Greg Forter, Professor
This course asks what literatures from across the globe can teach us about the causes,
effects, and potential solutions to global climate change. We’ll discuss a series
of novels in which the disasters of such change are explored with great complexity
and power. These are mostly works of speculative/science fiction, often referred to
as “cli-fi.” Their liberation from conventional “realism” permits them to raise a
number of urgent questions:
- How does one tell a story about climate that can grasp the interplay between global transformations and the always intimate (local) experience of such change?
- Which effects of global warming (drought, flood, “climate migration,” etc.) are most central to a given work, and why?
- How are these devastations unevenly distributed across both human and non-human populations?
- What, finally, does this literature’s emphasis on dystopian futures reveal about the
task of imagining alternatives to our current order?
Possible texts: M. Hamid, Exit West; K. Walker, The Dreamers; N. Okorafor, Who Fears Death; N. Booth, Sealed; L. Erdrich, Future Home of the Living God; A. Ghosh, The Hungry Tide; L. Ma, Severance.
Instructor: Robert Dean Hardy, Assistant Professor
Coastal regions are among the most populated and developed places globally. They are
imbued with the historical geographies of current and past societies and deeply affected
by contemporary social, political, and cultural values. In this course, students will
examine how changing social, political economic, and environmental climates have shaped
(and continue shaping) uneven coastal development globally. Key topics will include
climate change and climate justice.
Instructor: Mark Cooper, Professor of Film and Media Studies
Team-taught by a geographer and film historian, this course invites investigation
of the science and cinematic fiction of a wide range of disasters. Through lectures,
reading, viewing of popular film examples, and group research projects students will
compare the climate-describing and shaping powers of scientific and cinematic work.
Instructor: Jory Fleming, Research Associate (Climate Solutions Specialist) & Adjunct
Instructor
The Digital Earth is a blend of introductory geography, geographic data, and critical
thinking skills regarding numeracy, graphicacy, and digital literacy. The introduction
of core geographic themes like space, place and environment infuse the course. ""Climates""
encompasses many of the diverse social, ecological, and earth science domains that
are used to integrate these themes into the Carolina Core learning objectives.
Instructor: Greg Carbone, Professor
It is an introductory meteorology/climatology class.
Instructor: Meredith DeBoom, Assistant Professor
This course analyzes the contemporary and historical geopolitical, economic, and social
climates that have shaped debates over human rights (how are such rights defined?
who is responsible for providing them, and where? etc.) since World War II. Special
attention is given to the roles of nationalism, (post)colonialism, governments, and
activists in (re)shaping human rights norms and practices across space and time. The
course also considers the social, political, and economic climates that tend to facilitate
the violation of human rights.
Instructor: Greg Carbone, Professor
This course examines climate variability and change in the instrumental record as
well as projections for the 21st century.
Instructor: Meredith DeBoom, Assistant Professor
The theme of this semester's Political Geography graduate seminar is ""Climates of
Violence."" Students will explore theories of political, social, and economic violence
from across the social sciences and humanities, including structural violence, slow
violence, totalitarian violence, the banality of violence, and racial capitalism.
The goal of the course is to enhance students' understanding of the social, political,
and economic climates that facilitate both violence itself and its justification/legitimation.
Instructor: Dave Barbeau, Associate Professor
The vast majority of the records of prehistoric climates comes from sediments and
sedimentary rocks. As part of this course, we will examine the record of paleoclimate
change as preserved in the stratigraphy and isotope geochemistry of sedimentary rocks.
Instructor: Lara Ducate, Professor of German and Applied Linguistics
This course explores the origins of Germany's culture of environmentalism, current
views on climate and nature, and goals regarding renewable energies. We explore Germany's
rich history and culture to better understand the roots of sustainability in Germany
as well as current green practices in Germany, the US, and other countries. We also
reflect on social and personal values about nature and sustainability as they manifest
in communities and individual lives and engage in several field trips to experience
sustainability in action within our own community.
Green Technology in Germany (GERM/ENVR 295) and Into the Wild: Conservation since 1800 (HIST 360) will be taught side-by-side to facilitate occasional collaboration between the two classes. Each course focuses on both the natural and cultural Climates that have shaped sustainable practices inside and outside the US. Taken together, they offer students a unique interdisciplinary opportunity to engage sustainability topics through humanistic perspectives.
Instructor: Thomas Lekan, Professor
This course examines the history of nature conservation using case studies from the
US, East Africa, the Galapagos, and Germany. Students use integrative essays, blogposts,
and group presentations to link environmental history to site interpretation and policy.
Green Technology in Germany (GERM/ENVR 295) and Into the Wild: Conservation since 1800 (HIST 360) will be taught side-by-side to facilitate occasional collaboration between the two classes. Each course focuses on both the natural and cultural Climates that have shaped sustainable practices inside and outside the US. Taken together, they offer students a unique interdisciplinary opportunity to engage sustainability topics through humanistic perspectives.
Instructor: Pia Bertucci, Senior Instructor
The study of Italian food culture provides a lens through which we can better understand
the history and culture of Italy as well as the global implications of climate change
in food systems. Specifically, the issues of food insecurity, food waste, and the
preservation of food cultures will be considered.||
Section: 1
Instructor: Archie Crowley, Instructor
This course explores the relationship between language, gender, and sexuality and
how language use mediates the social constructions of gender and sexuality. We will
explore these questions through the lens of current political and cultural climates
around the understanding of gender and sexuality. Students will be encouraged to explore
the complex role language plays in producing, sustaining, and perpetuating gender
and sexual divisions in society, as well as the potential to challenge and transform
them.
Section: 2
Instructor: Lesley Smith, Instructor
This course explores ethical issues related to teaching global languages like English.
Throughout the class, we will address how ethically informed pedagogy benefits the
classroom climate, or, immediate learning environment. We will also explore how ethical
teaching practices can lead to more objective language assessment and inclusive language
policies within the broader climate of international education.
Instructor: Erin Meyer-Gutbrod, Assistant Professor
The class examines the biological role of organisms in the marine environment, including
adaptations, food web interactions, and abiotic influences on organism growth and
reproduction. Using both textbook and modern studies published in the primary literature,
students learn how organisms are involved in the cycling of materials and energy through
marine food webs. Throughout the course, connections are made between foundational
marine biology and major environmental concerns and the ocean's role in global climate
change.
Instructor: Lori Ziolkowski, Associate Professor
Climate change is happening whether we accept it or not. Therefore, we need to understand
why it is happening, what the impacts of it will be, and how we can stop it? This
course will use examples of science fiction – or climate fiction - to discuss the
physical basis of climate change, the impacts on society, and how we can cool a future
planet. Thus, this class will use literary works from the late 19th through today
to explore scenarios of extreme global warming and cooling, widespread drought, and
flooding due to projected sea level rise.
Instructor: Howie Scher, Associate Professor
Students will perform sampling trips to multiple points along the Broad, Saluda, and
Congaree Rivers as they flow through the Columbia Metropolitan Area.
Instructor: Xuefeng Peng, Assistant Professor
The earth's climate is directly affected by biogeochemical cycles in marine environments,
which is the subject of this course.
Instructor: Matt Kisner, Professor
This course investigates how the city of Columbia is responding and should respond
to climate change, focusing on ethical issues. The course is interdisciplinary, experiential
and student led.
Instructor: Alex Ogden, Associate Professor
This course surveys Russian literature from the late romantics (Pushkin, Lermontov), through the
great novelists (Turgenev, Goncharov, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy), to short story writers
and dramatists (Gogol, Pavlova, Chekhov). The course asks students to gain familiarity
with the perspectives, preoccupations, literary models, and styles of Russian writers,
and they learn critical reading skills through close consideration and discussion
of the readings. Assignments will focus on the many passages in which the country’s
climate is mapped onto the mental, moral, and emotional life of its citizens.
Instructor: Scott Dunn
In this course, we will investigate climate and mathematics, both from a current and
historical points of view, with special attention paid to climate change. Various
climate models will be studied as well as the meteorologists, scientists, and mathematicians
that developed them.
Instructor: Andrew Rajca, Associate Professor
This is a topics course focused on ecological cultural studies in Latin America. Exploring
varied approaches in the fields of ecocriticism, ecocultural studies, and the environmental
humanities, students will examine the relationships between the environment and culture
through film, literature, visual arts, the social sciences, and philosophy from Latin
America.
Congratulations to our 2021 Theme Semester Course Development Awardees
Course | Faculty Name | Affiliation(s) |
---|---|---|
ITAL 330 / 398 Adaptability and Sustainability in Italian Food Systems |
Pia Bertucci, Senior Instructor | Languages, Literatures, and Cultures |
GERM 295 / ENVR 295 Green Technology in Germany |
Lara Ducate, Professor |
Languages, Literatures, and Cultures |
HIST 360 Into the Wild: Conservation since 1800 |
Thomas Lekan, Professor |
History |
ENGL 439 World Literature and Global Climate Change |
Greg Forter, Professor | English Language and Culture |
MSCI 311 The Biology of Marine Organisms |
Erin Meyer-Gutbrod, Assistant Professor | Earth, Ocean and Environment |
RUSS 319 19th Century Russian Literature in Translation |
Alex Ogden, Associate Professor | Languages, Literatures, and Cultures |
MSCI 599 The Science of Climate Fiction |
Lori Ziolkowski, Associate Professor | Earth, Ocean and Environment |