Major Problems in Environment and Sustainability

Yearlong investigation of questions through series of case studies of five of most significant problems in environment and sustainability over last century: Dust Bowl, lead contamination, dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT), stratospheric ozone depletion, and tropical deforestation. Questions include how environmental problems become matters of public concern; what tools, techniques, and practices that make problems visible and legible to different publics and that inform possibilities for response are; how efforts aimed at understanding specific problems from different perspectives changed way other environmental problems and larger processes of environmental change are seen and approached; who gets left out in these different ways of seeing, and how do different ways of seeing and governing specific problems facilitate, justify, and compound imposition of harms on particular groups of people. Concurrently scheduled with Law 505B. In progress grading (credit to be given only on completion of courses 205C).