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Preference to sophomores. Components of multidisciplinary environmental problems and ethical questions associated with decision making in the regulatory arena. Students lead discussions on environmental issues such as groundwater contamination from point and nonpoint sources, cumulative watershed effects related to timber and mining practices, acid rain, and subsurface disposal of nuclear waste.

In order to reduce CO2 emissions and meet growing energy demands during the 21st Century, the world can expect to experience major shifts in the types and proportions of energy-producing systems. These decisions will depend on considerations of cost per energy unit, resource availability, and unique national policy needs. Less often considered is the environmental impact of the different energy producing systems: fossil fuels, nuclear, wind, solar, and other alternatives. One of the challenges has been not only to evaluate the environmental impact but also to develop a systematic basis for comparison of environmental impact among the energy sources. The course will consider fossil fuels (natural gas, petroleum and coal), nuclear power, wind and solar and consider the impact of resource extraction, refining and production, transmission and utilization for each energy source.

Preference to sophomores. Topics include: geologic processes that led to the concentration of gold in the river gravels and rocks of the Mother Lode region of California; and environmental impact of the Gold Rush due to population increase, mining operations, and high concentrations of arsenic and mercury in sediments from hard rock mining and milling operations. Recommended: introductory geology.

We will consider the case for nuclear power as an energy source through the lens of the Fukushima disaster. Specific topics will include the cause of the earthquake and tsunami, the causes for the nuclear power plant failure, the mechanisms for the release of radioactivity at the time of the accident and today, and the ongoing human impact of this tragedy. In addition to the details of the accident and the release of radioactivity, class discussions and readings will explore the health and economic impacts of nuclear power and examine how the accident has affected the future prospects of nuclear power in Japan, the U.S., and around the world.

Even the most artistically accomplished and well-managed performing arts organizations--symphony orchestras, operas, dance companies, and many theaters--tend to live on the edge financially. In fact, most performing arts groups are organized as nonprofit organizations, because they cannot make enough money to cover costs and survive as profit-seeking businesses. In this seminar we will explore the reasons for the tension between artistic excellence and economic security,drawing on the experience of performing arts organizations in the United States and in countries(whose governments have adopted quite different policies toward the arts). Using economic concepts and analysis that we develop in the seminar, you will first examine the fundamental reasons for the economic challenges faced by performing arts organizations. In later sessions, we will consider and evaluate alternative solutions to these challenges in the United States and other countries. The seminar may include meetings with managers and/or trustees of arts organizations.nnnBy the end of the seminar, you will be able to assess the economic condition of an arts organization, evaluate alternative strategies for its survival, and understand the consequences of alternative government policies toward the arts.nnnDuring the early part of the course, you will prepare two short papers on topics or questions that I will suggest. Later, you will prepare a longer paper applying concepts learned to one of the performing arts or a particular arts organization that interests you. You will submit that paper in stages, as you learn about concepts and issues that are relevant to your analysis. There will also be a final exam.

This course examines classic approaches to war as an intellectual problem, looking at how a matter of such great physical violence and passions can be subjected to understanding and used in philosophy, political theory, and art. Questions to be examined include the definition of war, its causes, its moral value, the nature of its participants, its use in the self-definition of individuals and societies, its relation to political authority, warfare and gender, and the problem of civil war.

(Formerly CLASSHIS 24N.) Preference to freshmen. Explore themes on the Roman Empire and its decline from the 1st through the 5th centuries C.E.. What was the political and military glue that held this diverse, multi-ethnic empire together? What were the bases of wealth and how was it distributed? What were the possibilities and limits of economic growth? How integrated was it in culture and religion? What were the causes and consequences of the conversion to Christianity? Why did the Empire fall in the West? How suitable is the analogy of the U.S. in the 21st century?

Few medieval women have been so often studied and yet so little understood as Heloise, abbess of the Paraclete (d. 1164). Her life, known primarily through the letters that she exchanged with her former husband, the philosopher Peter Abelard (d. 1142), offers a study in contradiction: she was an educated woman at a time when women were supposedly barred from education; a nun who, though dedicated to God, battled sexual desire; a mother, whose spiritual daughters seemingly displaced her one biological son; and a wife, whose husband became her ¿brother¿ in Christ. Traditional accounts have flattened these rich and various contradictions, presenting Heloise primarily as a tragic heroine. Seduced by her much older teacher, this Heloise conceives and bears a child, seeks a love unfettered by bonds of wedlock, and ultimately accepts enclosure in the monastery as her last desperate act of obedience to her lover, Abelard. This seminar revises the traditional image of Heloise, dignifying her as a scholar, monastic reformer, and administrator¿as well as a lover, wife, mother, and friend.

Biography is one of the most popular- and controversial- modes of writing about the past and perhaps its greatest draw is in its promise to revel the otherwise sequestered details of life, its everyday secrets otherwise sequestered from view. This, of course, is also at the heart of most modern fiction, and the two modes of writing have many other similarities as well as, needless to say, differences. The rhythms of life writing in biography as well as fiction will be explored in this class, along with the difficulties (factual, ethical, and otherwise) of ferreting out the secrets of individual lives. Among the figures explored in the course will be Sigmund Freud, Sabina Spielrein, Sylvia Plath, Hannah Arendt, and Woody Allen.