World Issues
CRN
Course Number
Credits
Description
As global citizens, what do we know and understand about global issues and ourselves in a world faced with complex issues, such as growing economic disparities, fragile democracies, environmental degradation, a changing climate, wars and militarism, threats to civil liberties, and globalization? How do we become intelligently informed? What is our awareness of and participation in positive social change at a variety of scales? How can we live mindfully as both global and local citizens?
This course explores the complex dynamics of our globalized world from a holistic, interdisciplinary, and transnational perspective. Together we examine multiple world issues, such as global inequality and poverty, climate change and biodiversity, food security, human rights, water, energy, population growth, cultural change, migration, global pandemics and public health, and our individual and community roles as agents of social change. This course is connected to the Wednesday World Issues Forum speaker series.
Prerequisites
Materials Fee
Texts
Raj Patel and Jason Moore. 2018. A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things. Oakland: University of California Press.
Other course readings will be made available on Canvas.
Credit/Evaluation
S/NX grading; narrative evaluation required for credit.
Regular, proactive participation in seminar discussions; Weekly written reflections on readings and topics presented in the World Issues Forum; final summary paper examining and integrating at least two of the global issues raised by Forum speakers; an advocacy letter directed to a public decision-maker on an issue covered by the course during the quarter.