Committee on Environment, Geography and Urbanization
Division of Social Sciences, The University of Chicago

Autumn 2024

Other Quarters: AY 2023-24

Climate Change, History and Social Theory

Neil Brenner, Fredrik Albritton Jonsson

CEGU 40244, SOCI 40244, CCCT 40244, CHSS 43204, HIST 43204, PLSC 40244
description
This course considers some of the major approaches to climate change, history and social theory that have been elaborated in contemporary scholarship. The course is framed with reference to the analysis of major socioenvironmental transformations at planetary, regional and local scales during the last four centuries of global capitalist development, through historical case studies from major world regions and imperial configurations and their present-day legacies. Key topics include the environmental subtexts/contexts of classical and contemporary social theory and historiography; the histories and geographies of environmental crises under capitalism; the conceptualization of “nature” and the “non-human” in relation to societal (and industrial) dynamics; the role of capitalism and fossil capital in the production of “metabolic rifts”; the impact of earth system science on history and social theory, including in relation to questions of periodization and associated debates on the “Anthropocene,” the “Capitalocene” and the “Plantationocene”; the interplay between urbanization, rural dispossession and climate emergencies; the uneven sociopolitical geographies of risk, vulnerability and disaster; the (geo)politics of decarbonization; insurgent struggles for climate justice; and possible post-carbon futures.

Ancient Landscapes I

Mehrnoush Soroush
CEGU 30061, ANTH 36710, GISC 30061, NEAA 30061
description
This is a two-course sequence that introduces students to theory and method in landscape studies and the use of Geographical Information Systems (GIS) to analyze archaeological, anthropological, historical, and environmental data. Course one covers the theoretical and methodological background necessary to understand spatial approaches to landscape and the fundamentals of using ESRI’s ArcGIS software, and further guides students in developing a research proposal. Course two covers more advanced GIS-based analysis (using vector, raster, and satellite remote sensing data) and guides students in carrying out their own spatial research project. In both courses, techniques are introduced through the discussion of case studies (focused on the archaeology of the Middle East) and through demonstration of software skills.

During supervised laboratory times, the various techniques and analyses covered will be applied to sample archaeological data and also to data from a region/topic chosen by the student.

Climate Change and Human Health

Kate Burrows
CEGU 31720, PBHS 31720
description
Climate change is one of the greatest global health threats facing the world in the 21st century. Through this course, students will gain foundational knowledge in the health effects of climate change. We will begin with several lectures on climate science as it related to the patterns of weather extremes experienced by populations. We will then identify the varying health outcomes linked to different climate-related exposures, emphasizing the specific impacts in vulnerable and high-risk populations. Specific topics include the effects of air pollution, extreme heat and heat waves, droughts, tropical cyclones, changes in vector habitats, and sea-level rise. Finally, we will discuss strategies for public health practitioners to aid communities in preventing or alleviating these adverse effects.

Introduction to Research at the Field Museum and the University of Chicago

Shannon Lee Dawdy

EVOL 38800

description

This course meets once every two weeks for a lecture by a curator at the Field Museum. A different curator lectures each week, presenting results of her/his current research on a range of topics in evolutionary biology, including phylogenetic systematics, molecular biology, paleontology, development, conservation biology and biodiversity, population biology, or biomechanics. Lectures often are followed by a tour of one of the major natural history collections in the world of living or fossil birds, mammals, plants, insects, fishes, invertebrates, or amphibians and reptiles.

Graduate Readings in Evolutionary Biology at the Field Museum

Shannon Lee Dawdy

EVOL 49600

description

Directed individual reading courses supervised by CEB faculty members who are curators at the Field Museum. Students must choose the instructor name from the faculty listing in the Time Schedules and register using that instructor’s assigned section number.

Off-Campus Graduate Research: Evolution

Shannon Lee Dawdy

EVOL 49800

description

Advanced research under the direction of the faculty of the Committee on Evolutionary Biology, undertaken away from the University of Chicago campus at the Field Museum, the Chicago Zoological Park, Lincoln Park Zoo, established biological field stations under the direction of their staffs, or other locations approved by the Chair and the student’s advisory committee. Students must choose the instructor name from the faculty listing in the Time Schedules and register using that instructor’s assigned section number.

Anthropological Encounters with Technology

Michael Fisch

ANTH 51942

description

How has anthropology adapted in recent decades to humanity’s underlying technological condition? How has it recalibrated foundational assumptions in order to engage posthuman claims and speculative machinic philosophies? This seminar explores current anthropological approaches to questions concerning technology in conjunction with recent philosophies of technology. Of central concern will be examining the ways in which latter has informed a reconceptualization of the relationship between culture and technics in opposition to culturalist tropes and technologically determinist accounts of modern society. At the same time, we will examine the limits of ethnographic approaches to technological environments. Our overall aim will be to elaborate a language, analytic, and orientation for cultural encounters with technology, and the relevant insights.

Introduction to Environmental Ethics

Sarah Fredericks

RETH 30702

description

This course will examine answers to four questions that have been foundational to environmental ethics: Are religious traditions responsible for environmental crises? To what degree can religions address environmental crises? Does the natural world have intrinsic value in addition to instrumental value to humans, and does the type of value the world has imply anything about human responsibility? What point of view (anthropocentrism, biocentrism, theocentrism) should ground an environmental ethic?

Since all four of the above questions are highly contested questions, we will examine a constellation of responses to each question. During the quarter we will read texts from a wide variety of religious and philosophical perspectives, though I note that the questions we are studying arose out of the western response to environmental crises and so often use that language. Some emphasis will be given to particularly influential texts, thinkers, and points of view in the scholarship of environmental ethics. As the questions above indicate, the course prioritizes theoretical issues in environmental ethics that can relate to many different applied subjects (e.g. energy, water, animals, climate change) rather than emphasizing these applied issues themselves. Taking this focus will give you the background necessary to work on such issues later.

Collective Agency and Responsibility

Sarah Fredericks

RETH 50900

description

In the twentieth and twenty-first century, modern western notions of individual identity, agency, and responsibility have been challenged by collective experiences. Studies of collective atrocities such as the Holocaust, apartheid, racism and sexism have informed research on collective identity, agency, and responsibility. Research and legal developments on corporate agency and responsibility add to the discussion. Finally, global environmental challenges such as climate change raise questions about the types of agents responsible for these harms and for combating them. This class will explore a number of theories of collective agency and responsibility to interrogate the differences and relationships between individuals and collectives.

Latest Experiments in Architectural History

Jacobé Huet

ARTH 24651, ARTH 34651

description

This seminar invites students to examine recent scholarly experiments in architectural history. Participants will read and discuss a corpus of books published in the last five years. Each week, we will take a deep dive into a single publication by synthesizing its argument, unpacking its structure, and demonstrating its potential limits. In-class activities will catalyze dialogue and debate on the readings as well as highlight resonances across assigned books. By the end of the quarter, students will have developed transversal views of contemporary practices in architectural history and heightened their senses of methodological self-awareness.

Ecopoetics: Literature and Ecology

Jennifer Scappettone

ENGL 52123

description

This course will introduce students to recent debates in the environmental humanities and simultaneously to a range of creative interventions across fiction, documentary prose, poetry, and the visual arts spurred by the effects of what has come to be named the Anthropocene epoch (despite substantive challenges to the term that we will address)—in a moment of perceived grave environmental crisis. We will consider the differences between, and the potential imbrication of, critical/theoretical and imaginative responses to seemingly insurmountable challenges to the biosphere and their outsized effects on underserved communities. Students will, in turn, be asked to respond critically to the works at hand, but also to conduct their own experimental research and on-site fieldwork in Chicago on an environmental issue of their choosing. (20th/21st)

Sensing the Anthropocene

Jennifer Scappettone

CEGU 27700, ENGL 47700

description

In this co-taught course between the departments of English (Jennifer Scappettone) and Visual Arts (Amber Ginsburg), we will deploy those senses most overlooked in academic discourse surrounding aesthetics and urbanism–hearing, taste, touch, and smell–to explore the history and actuality of Chicago as a site of anthropogenic changes. Holding the bulk of our classes out of doors, we will move through the city seeking out and documenting traces of the city’s foundations in phenomena such as the filling in of swamp; the river as pipeline; and the creation of transportation and industrial infrastructure–all with uneven effects on human and nonhuman inhabitants. Coursework will combine readings in history and theory of the Anthropocene together with examples of how artists and activists have made the Anthropocene visible, tangible, and audible, providing forums for playful documentation and annotations as we draw, score, map, narrate, sing, curate and collate our sensory experience of the Anthropocene into a final experimental book project.

Winter 2025

Proseminar in Race, Diaspora, and Indigeneity: Core Works

Ryan Cecil Jobson

RDIN 40101, ANTH 40101

description

This graduate proseminar serves as an introduction to the concepts and categories that orient the study of race, diaspora, and Indigeneity. This includes repertoires of Black and Indigenous worldmaking alongside histories of plantation slavery, settler colonialism, and their afterlives in the Americas; circuits of racialized labor in the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans; and the construction of race and Indigeneity as categories of scientific and occult origins. Students will consult the works of Toni Morrison, W.E.B. Du Bois, C.L.R. James, Audra Simpson, Amitav Ghosh, Kim Tallbear, Audre Lorde, and Frantz Fanon, among others.

Ancient Landscapes II

Mehrnoush Soroush
NEAA 30062, ANTH 26711, ANTH 36711, GISC 20062, GISC 30062, NEAA 20062
description
This is a two-course sequence that introduces students to theory and method in landscape studies and the use of Geographical Information Systems (GIS) to analyze archaeological, anthropological, historical, and environmental data. Course one covers the theoretical and methodological background necessary to understand spatial approaches to landscape and the fundamentals of using ESRI’s ArcGIS software, and further guides students in developing a research proposal. Course two covers more advanced GIS-based analysis (using vector, raster, and satellite remote sensing data) and guides students in carrying out their own spatial research project. In both courses, techniques are introduced through the discussion of case studies (focused on the archaeology of the Middle East) and through demonstration of software skills. During supervised laboratory times, the various techniques and analyses covered will be applied to sample archaeological data and also to data from a region/topic chosen by the student.

Adventures in Speculative Environments: Readings in Anthropology and Environment

Michael Fisch

CEGU 40000, ANTH 40000

description

This graduate seminar explores topics in environmental anthropology and science and technology studies through instances of ecological experimentation. By reading ethnographic accounts of experimentation alongside speculative ecosophies and climate fiction, it will consider the ways in which such ecological experimentations pose conceptual, methodological, and ethical challenges that help us develop an anthropological engagement adequate to an era dominated by concerns with the constant threat of pandemics and the declining condition of our global ecology. It will aim, as well, to elaborate the implicit possibilities born of thinking not only in terms of relation but also in relation to a politics and ethics of process. Of particular concern will be a number of questions, such as: how to (re)imagine the conceptual currency of nature as an analytic category or even object of inquiry; how ethnography might reshape technologies of nature; and what sort of social transformations might this reshaping render imaginable.

Wild Easts

Darya Tsymbalyuk

CEGU 33017, REES 33017

description

Imaginaries of the “wild” have long been employed as part of colonial projects, from the conquest of lands of the Great Eurasian Steppe to modern conservation initiatives. In this course, we examine ideas about the “wild” with a focus on the easts of “Europe” and easts of Russia, whether Ukraine, Qazaqstan, or Bulgaria, and ways in which these lands have been constructed as “wild” territories. We discuss ecologies and cultures of the steppe, nuclear and (post)industrial wastelands, and contemporary practices of re-wilding to study the violence of being framed as “wild”, as well subversive and liberatory potentials of (re)claiming all things “wild”. The course takes on an interdisciplinary approach, examining works of fiction alongside history books, and films alongside memoirs; additionally, a possibility of a field trip to Site A/Plot M Disposal Site, where the world’s first nuclear reactor is buried, is to be confirmed.

Ethics of Rest

Sarah E. Fredericks

RETH 37378

description

In today’s capitalistic world in which technology enables expectations that we are always able to be connected, rest can seem far away. In this course we will read classic and contemporary texts from a variety of religious traditions on the priority of rest, leisure, and/or a change from one’s daily life. Themes to be explored include the purpose of such breaks (worship, care for one’s self, building relationships, enabling one’s work); how rest is conceived and practiced; and the varying expectations and opportunities for rest among people of different ages, genders, races, financial statuses, and roles in society.

Computational Social Science Workshop

Marc Berman

MACS 50000

description

High performance and cloud computing, massive digital traces of human behavior from ubiquitous sensors, and a growing suite of efficient model estimation, machine learning and simulation tools are not just extending classical social science inquiry, but transforming it to pose novel questions at larger and smaller scales. The Computational Social Science (CSS) Workshop is a weekly event that features this work, highlights associated skills and data, and explores the use of CSS in the world. The CSS Workshop alternates weekly between research workshops and professional workshops. The research workshops feature new CSS work from top faculty and advanced graduate students from UChicago and around the world, while professional workshops highlight useful skills and data (e.g., machine learning with Python’s scikit-learn; the Twitter firehose API) and showcase practitioners using CSS in the government, industry and nonprofit sectors. Each quarter, the CSS Workshop also hosts a distinguished lecture, debate and dinner, and a student conference.

Readings in Ecology and Evolution 

Luis Bettencourt 

ECEV 49600

description

Readings in Ecology and Evolution 

Methods and Issues in Media Studies

Kate Burrows 

CMST 40001

description

This class will introduce a toolkit for thinking about and researching media, mediation, and new media cultures. We will begin with questions of technology. These will include the tension between technological determinism and the social construction of technology, as well as methods for investigating the historical evolution of media technologies. To explore how power operates within and through media, we will engage concepts and theoretical frameworks including algorithmic bias, transmedia, fan studies, platform studies, and media infrastructures. Students will develop critical and aesthetic perspectives on digital media, with special attention to games, participatory media, and code.

Introduction to Science Studies

Michael Rossi

CHSS 32000, ANTH 32305, HIPS 22001, HIST 44906, HLTH 22001, KNOW 31408, SOCI 40137

description

This course explores the interdisciplinary study of science as an enterprise. During the twentieth century, sociologists, historians, philosophers, and anthropologists all raised interesting and consequential questions about the sciences. Taken together their various approaches came to constitute a field, “science studies.” The course provides an introduction to this field. Students will not only investigate how the field coalesced and why, but will also apply science-studies perspectives in a fieldwork project focused on a science or science-policy setting. Among the topics we may examine are the sociology of scientific knowledge and its applications, actor-network theories of science, constructivism and the history of science, images of normal and revolutionary science, accounts of research in the commercial university, and the examined links between science and policy.

Spring 2025

Colloquium: Environmental History (Foundations Course)

Elizabeth Chatterjee

CEGU 57300, HIST 57300

description

This graduate colloquium provides an advanced introduction to the vibrant field of environmental history. We will trace the evolution of this rich historiography, from first-generation classics-often focused on the American West-through to the geographical and thematic diversification of recent years. The course will give a flavor of this diversity, touching too upon influential works in emerging subfields like animal history, climate history, enviro-tech, and evolutionary history. Throughout, we will study how historians have addressed new analytical and aesthetic challenges: negotiating the insights of the natural sciences, incorporating nonhuman agency, and writing history at the vast scales of deep time and the planetary. The course is ideal for PhD students preparing a general examination field and/or designing a research paper, but is open to MA students as well. This course counts towards the Doctoral Certificate as a Foundations course

Latin American Environmental Humanities

Victoria Saramago

CEGU 45000, SPAN 45000

description

The environmental humanities have emerged in the past couple of decades as a crucial field to understand the multifaceted history of environmental thought and culture around the world as well as to grapple with the intractable challenges wrought by the current environmental crisis. In Latin America, the field has flourished in dialogue with Anglophone ecocriticism at the same time as it has expanded its thematic, theoretical, a critical reach. This course provides an overview of the environmental humanities in the context of Latin American literature and culture. We will delve into key concepts and problems in the field, from the debates on the Anthropocene and alternative terms to the cultural history of forests and deserts, subfields such as ecofeminism, plant studies, animal studies and energy humanities, as well as concepts particularly productive in the region such as (post)extractivism and multinaturalism. This course will combine primary sources, including works of literature, cinema and visual arts, with a robust attention to influential scholarship on the field. Taught in Spanish.

The Land is Ours: Colonialism, Belonging, and Sovereignty in Africa

Thuto Thipe

CEGU 50103, HIST 50103

description

This course centers land in thinking about the development of dominant political, economic, social, and cultural systems in Africa during and after colonialism. It examines how different actors have articulated their relationships to specific areas of land and established systems and institutions to structure these relationships. Looking at the colonial period, we will focus on competition between indigenous and colonial land tenure systems and the transformative effects of colonial land tenure systems on how people in Africa engaged in political, economic, and social life. Under independence, we will examine how African states used land as part of decolonization processes and the interplay between colonial and indigenous land tenure systems in how the citizens of independent African states have framed and exercised their claims to land. Texts for the course will include historical and other scholarly monographs, primary documents, photographs, and film.

Climate Change and Human Mobility

Jessica Darrow

CEGU 69400, SSAD 69400, HMRT 39401

 

description
A 2021 UN report estimated that 21.5 million people have been forced to move, each year, for over a decade, due to climate change. The report states: “weather-related crises have triggered more than twice as much displacement as conflict and violence in the last decade” (UNHCR, 2021). In spite of mounting evidence that climate change is to blame for these catastrophic weather-related events and associated increases in migration, the UNHCR eligibility criteria for refugee status doesn’t include climate change. Due to political challenges involved in considering such a definition change, the UN convened member states to establish a global compact for migration that takes the effects of climate change into consideration. The Global Compact suggests rights and obligations of climate change migrants, and standards to guide sovereign states in protecting these rights. Given the growth in climate change related migration over the last decade, and the complicated nature of implementation with such a broad international instrument such as the Global Compact, there is much room for development within the climate change and human mobility sector. This course will: examine the issue of climate change and its relationship to human mobility using human rights, political ecology, and social policy perspectives; consider how these different perspectives for understanding the problem suggest different types of policy solutions; and consider the impact of these solutions for those affected.
 
 

History of Energy in East Asia

Yuting Dong

CEGU 34615, CHSS 34615, EALC 35615, HIST 34615

description
This course discusses the history of major energy sources in East Asia with a focus on coal, hydropower, and nuclear power plant. We pay close attention to both the technological side of the history of energy and how different energy sources interact with the social and political environment in Japan, China, and Koreas.
 
 

International Climate Policy

Amir Jina

PPHA 39930

description
Anthropogenic climate change is one of the world’s most difficult challenges. Few aspects of society will remain untouched by its effects. A major barrier to making progress is that few people understand all of the disparate pieces of the puzzle – scientists, economists, and policy-makers frequently lack a common language to advance solutions. This interdisciplinary course covers the tools and insights from economics, environmental science, and statistics that inform our understanding of climate change impacts, as well as mitigation and adaptation policy design and implementation. Our focus will be on the impacts of climate change upon society, and the necessity of solutions that deal with the global but unequal nature of the impacts. Students will begin with a grounding in the scientific realities of the future of the planet’s climate, and develop a mastery of key conceptual ideas from environmental economics and environmental policy relevant for climate change. They will also acquire tools for conducting analyses of climate impacts and policies that can inform how we face this global challenge. The latter parts of the course will hone students’ ability to apply and communicate these insights through practical analysis of national policies and writing op-eds about climate-related issues. The goal is to help students become informed and critically-minded practitioners of climate-informed policy making, able to communicate the urgency to any audience.
 
 

Leveraging Sensors and Mobile Technologies for Population Health Research

Laura McGuinn

CEGU 47000, MSPH 47000

description
This course explores the use of wearable devices, mobile technologies, and environmental sensors in population and precision health research, with a focus on mental health and well-being. Students will learn how to integrate physiological, behavioral, and environmental data to measure health outcomes and exposures in real-world settings. The course covers key topics such as study design, data collection methods like ecological momentary assessment, data analysis techniques for mobile health data, and challenges related to adherence and health disparities. By the end, students will gain the practical skills to design and analyze studies using these advanced technologies for health research.
 
 

Environment and Economy in Late Imperial and Modern China

Kenneth Pomeranz

CEGU 34505, HIST 34504

description
An introduction to the literature on economic and environmental change from China’s 18th century “prosperous age” to the unprecedented growth of the post-1978 period. Major topics include land use, irrigation, and agriculture; consequences of commercialization and commoditization; mining, logging, herding, and “frontier” development; state/society relations, and differing modes of state extraction and regulation; demographic change and changes in living standards; property rights, class relations, spatial inequalities; and changing responses to “natural” disaster. This is a reading and discussion course, with written assignments focused on ensuring mastery of the literature; interested students may substitute a research project for the historiographic papers, but only after clearing this with the instructor.
 
 

Introduction to Urban Health

Seleeke Flingai

CEGU 23900, HLTH 23900

description
This seminar course will provide a broad overview of the political, economic, social, and physical conditions that impact the health of populations in urban settings. Using social epidemiological theories and the logics of racial capitalism and neoliberalism as points of departure, this course will take a critical approach to the study of urban health and its determinants. Beginning with a grounding in urban political economy and governance, the rest of the course will explore several fundamental topics in urban health, including the role of neighborhoods, housing, and spatial processes such as segregation, gentrification, and neighborhood redevelopment on health; social cohesion and social capital; the criminal legal system; climate vulnerability and environmental exposures; and accessibility to health-promoting resources such as healthy food, health care facilities, and more. Given the interdisciplinary nature of urban health, we will draw insights from a range of disciplines (e.g., public health, history, political economy, sociology, critical geography, and urban studies); given the constraints of a single course, the material will primarily focus on the U.S. context. The ultimate goal of this course is to have students develop a critical perspective and a set of actionable frameworks to analyze the relationship between urban processes (political, economic, spatial, etc.) and health.