2022-2023 Academic Catalog 
    
    Mar 29, 2024  
2022-2023 Academic Catalog [ARCHIVED CATALOG]

IDCE 30334 - Special Topics


This course addresses current or timely topics, that are in a pilot phase or that are known to be one time offerings.  Special Topics are unique for each instructor and vary from semester to semester. May be repeatable for credit.

SPRING 2023 TOPICS

SECTION 01 - COMMUNITY POWER, COMMUNITY CHANGE

This course examines how communities build power for change. With an equity lens, the course will introduce students to the processes of structural change that improve community well-being and build community leadership. We will focus on community-driven solutions that change public policy and practice to address disparities in income, health, housing, education, and food access. Students will learn how different “bottom-up” strategies such as civic engagement, policy advocacy, community organizing, participatory action research, and public-private coalitions facilitate these changes and what diverse impacts they have on individual and institutional change. While this course draws primarily from a U.S. context, it covers theories, concepts, and practices that apply to local and global communities.

SECTION 02 - HEALTH RIGHTS: ADVOACY AND ACTION

People across the globe continually engage in advocacy and activist efforts for governments to recognize health as a fundamental human right and provide quality and reliable health care for
all. This course will examine issues and questions regarding the commodification of health and the counter-forces of advocacy and community activism. Case studies examples include: the Black Panther Party political struggle for health care, Cuba’s successful health literacy campaign, and the “revolutionary medicine” of the Garifuna people in Honduras. Students will explore the role of communication (both written and verbal) in public health advocacy and activism. We will learn how to creatively implement communication health campaigns, as well as its potential emancipatory or empowering effects on wellbeing. Examples include creative narrative approaches, street theatre, and community action projects. This course will provide students with a critical understanding of communication in promoting and impeding the achievement of public health goals.

SECTION 03 - VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN: A PUBLIC HEALTH PERSPECTIVE

The World Health Organization (WHO) has described violence against women as an “global health problem of epidemic proportions” with men’s violence against women a leading cause of premature death for women globally. This class will have a focus on intimate partner violence within the U.S. and the accompanying anti-violence movement (both historical and current). We will examine the varied theoretical approaches and solutions to gender violence. Students will learn about dynamics of intimate violence (with a focus on rural America), how we conceptualize specifically, cis male violence, and why a public health lens on the problem is necessary. The class will include inquiry into the national conversation around transformative justice as it relates to addressing gender violence and learn how other global women’s movements fortify a resistance to violence and misogyny

SECTION 04 - CLIMATE & SOCIAL JUSTICE - Climate change threatens the economic, political, and social fiber of every community. Still, some groups face greater risks than others. In assessing the different impacts experienced by different groups, this seminar course will begin with an introduction to the concept of social justice in terms of the uneven distribution of greenhouse gas emissions and climate impacts in the US and at the global level. We will also examine intersectional justice and climate change, including how existing structural inequality deepens the vulnerability of people in low-income communities. We will apply theories of social justice to critique strategies for mitigation and adaptation to climate change, with particular attention paid to how governments reduce or exacerbate communities’ vulnerabilities and social inequities. The last part of the course will explore prospects for advancing social justice and climate resilience from the grassroots to the national levels. In translating theory into practice, the students will be divided into small groups to conduct joint research and present case studies of the relationship between social justice and climate (mitigation or adaption) within a selected community.

SECTION 06 - MODELING CLIMATE CHANGE & WATER RESOURCES FOR SUSTAINABILITY

Climate change poses an enormous challenge to our management of water resources and related sectors and issues.  At the same time, factors such as population growth, land use and land cover change, construction of new infrastructure, and changing social habits also influence water resources and must be considered in the design of sustainable systems.  Water resources influence all major development sectors: human health and wellbeing; livelihoods and economy; energy systems; food systems and agriculture.  They are also critical to conserving ecosystems and biodiversity.  This interdependence of multiple sectors on water makes it a ‘gateway’ into climate-change resilience and sustainability. 

Cities, towns and their surrounding regions are experiencing the impacts of climate-change, climate variability and instability in ways that reflect the interdependence of issues and sectors: changes in rainfall and/or temperature can have cascading impacts.  To adequately understand and anticipate these impacts in a given place requires us to build models using social, economic and ecological data (qualitative, quantitative, geospatial and narrative). This process needs to be participatory and collaborative, involving diverse stakeholders who co-create the model(s), derive understanding from them, and apply them to consider ways to respond to impacts and problems.

In this graduate seminar course, we will look at climate change impacts on water resource management in mega cities and their surrounding regions, using Mexico City Metropolitan Area as an active case study.  In the first part of the course, we will review existing models, including assumptions and data sources. Next, students will learn how to build their own system dynamics models using VenSim®.  A major Team Project component acts as a Practicum: student teams tackle real cities and regions, then compare and contrast findings.  As well as elucidating interdependencies, models will explore the implications of future climate scenarios projected by the IPCC.  In the last part of the course, we will explore adaptation measures including policy interventions that would enhance the sustainability of water resources.

SECTION 07 - AFFORDABLE HOUSING DEVELOPMENT & FINANCE - Quality, affordable housing is a foundational element of community health. Students in this course will learn about the history, development, and current prospects in the housing field with an emphasis on affordability and inclusion. Students will learn about the importance of creativity, innovation and leverage, both political and programmatic, in producing affordable housing through a project design experience.  
Concentrations: Urban Resilience, Refugees/Immigrants/Belonging, Education, Youth and Development

SECTION 08 - ENVIRONMENTAL GOVERNANCE - The rapid increase of extreme weather events presents major challenges to present and future generations. With this in mind, the course is based on the assumption that addressing some of these key environmental challenges calls for understanding the concepts, instruments, and institutions responsible for regulating natural resource consumption and distribution. It, therefore, aims to provide students with a deeper understanding of the processes and key actors within the global environmental regime, the strengths, and weaknesses, as well as the reforms required in governing the use of natural resources. The syllabus begins by framing the environment as economic, political, and social issues. It then proceeds to provide an overview of environmental governance concepts and subsequently applies these theories in analyzing policy processes, normative frameworks, and institutional architectures central to global and national environmental governance. To highlight and address the complexity of current environmental change, the course adopts a highly interdisciplinary approach as a means of enhancing the capability of students to rethink ways of addressing environmental change beyond a specific discipline. The course will therefore draw from fields such as anthropology, environmental politics, history, law, human geography, political ecology, political economy, religion, and urban sustainability.

SECTION 09 - ENVIRONMENTAL MOVEMENT - For decades, environmental and climate movements have used different strategies to blaze new discussive paths within climate, nature, and natural resource debates. Against this backdrop, the course explores the conditions that foster the rise and fall of collective actions that seek to shape environmental and climate issues. The course will begin with an introduction of core theories that underpin environmental movements, and then apply these theories to real-world situations. We will adopt decolonial, intersectional, non-orthodox, radical, and eco-Marxist theories in understanding the nature of environmental movements. The course will then delve into the historical origins of these movements, their aims, their strategies, and their tensions with climate skeptics and trade unions. We will also explore the contradictions or similarities in strategies that grassroots activists adopt, particularly considering their different cultures and geographic location. It will, therefore, be relevant for students who are keen on understanding the various kinds of climate and environmental engagements from different contexts, how political actions shape or trigger environmental reforms, as well as the internal or external factors that impede collective actions. In translating theory into practice, the students will be divided into small groups to conduct joint research and present their findings on a selected movement.

SECTION 10 - VIOLENCE AS SPECTACLE: GENOCIDE AND MASS ATROCITIES IN ASIA - What causes spectacular forms of political violence? What cultural factors shape the form and content of such violence where it results in mass death and, in some cases, genocide? What are the possibilities and limits of representing these immense tragedies to those people who did not directly experience them? And, finally, what are the ethical consequences of our answers? This multidisciplinary seminar will introduce students to key theoretical and methodological approaches towards answering these questions. To do so, the course will examine cases of extreme violence across Asia. Case studies, organized thematically, explore communal violence (India/Pakistan), politicide (Indonesia), mass rape as a weapon of war (Bangladesh), sexual servitude (Korea/Japan), and famine crimes (China), among others. The combined thematic/country approach will enable us to better understand the complex role cultural values and practices play in shaping such mass violence as spectacle, as well as the moral hazards of culturalist interpretations.

FALL 2022 TOPICS

SECTION 01 - MODELING CLIMATE CHANGE & WATER RESOURCES FOR SUSTAINABILITY

Climate change poses an enormous challenge to our management of water resources and related sectors and issues.  At the same time, factors such as population growth, land use and land cover change, construction of new infrastructure, and changing social habits also influence water resources and must be considered in the design of sustainable systems.  Water resources influence all major development sectors: human health and wellbeing; livelihoods and economy; energy systems; food systems and agriculture.  They are also critical to conserving ecosystems and biodiversity.  This interdependence of multiple sectors on water makes it a ‘gateway’ into climate-change resilience and sustainability. 

Cities, towns and their surrounding regions are experiencing the impacts of climate-change, climate variability and instability in ways that reflect the interdependence of issues and sectors: changes in rainfall and/or temperature can have cascading impacts.  To adequately understand and anticipate these impacts in a given place requires us to build models using social, economic and ecological data (qualitative, quantitative, geospatial and narrative).  This process needs to be participatory and collaborative, involving diverse stakeholders who co-create the model(s), derive understanding from them, and apply them to consider ways to respond to impacts and problems.

In this graduate seminar course, we will look at climate change impacts on water resource management in mega cities and their surrounding regions, using Mexico City Metropolitan Area as an active case study.  In the first part of the course, we will review existing models, including assumptions and data sources. Next, students will learn how to build their own system dynamics models using VenSim®.  A major Team Project component acts as a Practicum: student teams tackle real cities and regions, then compare and contrast findings.  As well as elucidating interdependencies, models will explore the implications of future climate scenarios projected by the IPCC.  In the last part of the course, we will explore adaptation measures including policy interventions that would enhance the sustainability of water resources.

SECTION 02 - HEALTH RIGHTS: ADVOCACY AND ACTION

Health - physical, emotional, and social - is a crucial pillar of human well-being. People across the globe continually engage in advocacy and activist efforts for governments to recognize health as a fundamental human right and provide quality and reliable health care for all. This course will examine issues and questions regarding the commodification of health and the counter-forces of advocacy and community activism. Students will explore the role of communication (both written and verbal) in public health. We will look at historical and current health campaigns to probe how to creatively implement these, as well as explore campaign’s potential emancipatory or empowering effects on wellbeing. Examples include creative narrative approaches, street theatre, and community action projects. This course will provide students with a critical understanding of communication in both promoting and impeding the achievement of public health goals. Students will develop communication skills to strategically advance public health policies and social change.

SECTION 03 - CLIMATE AND SOCIAL JUSTICE

Climate change threatens the economic, political, and social fiber of every community. Still, some groups face greater risks than others. In assessing the impacts experienced by different groups, this seminar course will begin with an introduction to the concept of social justice in terms of the uneven distribution of greenhouse gas emissions and climate impacts in the US and at the global level. We will also examine intersectional justice and climate change, including how existing structural inequality deepens the vulnerability of people in low-income communities. We will apply theories of social justice to critique strategies for mitigation and adaptation to climate change, with particular attention paid to how governments reduce or exacerbate communities’ vulnerabilities and social inequities. The last part of the course will explore prospects for advancing social justice and climate resilience from the grassroots to the national levels. To translate theory into practice, students will be divided into small groups to conduct joint research and present case studies of the relationship between social justice and climate mitigation and/or adaption within a selected community.

Anticipated Terms Offered: Annually