Spring 2020

Provides students with an economist’s perspective on:

•  Energy markets and environmental regulation
• (De)regulation of power markets
• Energy storage
• Oil and gas pricing and contracts
• Geopolitics and investment risk
• Cap-and-trade and climate policy
• Renewable energy finance

As capitalist relations remake the earth through projects of intensified mineral extraction, carbon-based energy consumption and the production of 'waste', in this course we will examine the diverse histories and practices through which nature-society relations have been studied in anthropology and related disciplines. The course will follow a genealogical approach to understand some contemporary theoretical developments in environmental anthropology, including multispecies ethnography, the anthropology of infrastructure, and ontological anthropology. In what ways do these modes of doing anthropology recapitulate or address some of the earlier debates on race, indigeneity, materiality and alterity? How might recent work in the field generate new ways to remake the world and our understanding of it? The class will combine key theoretical texts in cultural ecology, political ecology and science and technology studies together with ethnographies of natureculture to investigate how earth water, earth, air and fire are being remade in the current moment. It borrows from and builds on the "Reading List for a Progressive Environmental Anthropology" by Guarasci, Moore and Vaughn (2018) to rethink and reconstitute what counts as the canon of the field by attending to the contributions of women, people of color, scholars working outside of the United States, and indigenous authors. By examining the entanglements of nature, culture and political economy in the contemporary moment, the course will enable students to situate and construct their dissertation research projects with what is a prolific and compelling literature to imagine and understand our climate changed world.

Introduction to the Course

This course examines the historical relationship between a city and its water supply and the new techniques being used to manage water in its many forms - stormwater runoff, flooding, drinking water supply and conservation, and river and stream enhancement and protection. It builds strongly on the planning, design, implementation, operating and monitoring of "green stormwater infrastructure"(or, GSI). GSI is a term developed by Philadelphia's “Green City, Clean Water” concepts that are currently being tested and implemented in cities across the US and abroad. By re-thinking how we build and manage our cities, using "soft path", "green", "decentralized" water infrastructure systems, we may be able to change the long-term outcome for the livability and viability of our communities as issues of climate change, aging infrastructure and funding take center stage in the 21st century.

The purpose of this course is to prepare the student to manage complex environmental, social and economic issues using science, planning, green design, geographic information systems, community outreach and education. Water is the medium and Philadelphia is the setting and the goal is the creation of a vibrant, sustainable city. This course will involve urban development and city planning, environmental justice and social equity, jobs and economics, civil engineering, environmental science, regulations and policy, urban hydrology, landscape architecture, community outreach and politics. You are not expected to be an expert in these areas when you begin the course, but by the time class is completed, you will be expected to understand the "transdisciplinary" nature and importance of working within groups of experts, politicians and other stakeholders.

Perhaps most importantly, this is an academically-based curriculum service (ABCS) learning approach for using water, science, and politics to create more sustainable and resilient cities. Students will be expected to take knowledge learned in the classroom and apply it through field investigations, working with non-profits, scientific data analysis, educating and/or other means of working closely with stakeholders in the community in an attempt to change the world, or at least a small piece of it.

This course is being taught by Professor of Water Practice Howard Neukrug, PE who formed the city’s Office of Watersheds in 1999 to bring many of these ideas to Philadelphia. Prof. Neukrug will use seminars, lectures, student presentations and a comprehensive community

service project to develop an in-depth understanding of current conditions effecting urban environments and how science and politics interact to influence the development of sustainable cities. It will connect the issues of a post-industrial urban centers with the goals of the Clean Water Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act and the Water Industry.

Our "buried" and remaining urban creeks and rivers and the vast underground infrastructure network will be a central theme upon which we will build a working knowledge of centuries of urban growth and the environmental injustices that have emerged along the way . These will all become key factors in determining how improving our water environment can make a real difference in the lives of Philadelphians and other urban systems such as housing, land use, transportation, recreation, economy, and place in turn, set the trajectory for a sustainable city.

Topics covered in the course include: urban and community planning and design, green infrastructure, landscape architecture, risk management and communication, water quality and protection, resilience to climate change, watershed monitoring and reporting, public outreach and education, implementing change and the dynamic relationship between the watershed, waterfront, and the waterways.

Landscapes of energy extraction and carbon sequestration may be located far from one another, yet they are closely connected through the dynamics of the carbon economy, the legacy patterns of territorial power and control, and of the cultural narratives that we tell. This seminar will delve into historic and emerging energy infrastructure and its deeply-held cultural narratives, unpack the politics of carbon markets and carbon trading, and analyze some promising carbon sequestration practices and their cultural landscapes.

The first part of the class will look at how the large-scale infrastructure projects built to enable extraction have long acted as powerful organizers of territory: how energy infrastructure projects have historically been used to project power, extract value, and reshape patterns of labor and settlement — whether it’s the canals that were built to support coal extraction in Pennsylvania, the geography of oil pipelines and oil ports, or emerging kinds of renewable energy that continue to carry old legacy patterns of power. The second half — landscapes of sequestration — will survey a range of landscape strategies with the potential to “draw down” the atmospheric carbon pool — from new technological approaches, to new kinds of agriculture and forestry management, to coastal mangrove restoration and the farming of coastal “blue carbon.” We will investigate the ecological principles behind these strategies, and critically analyze the spatial and cultural effects that these practices can have.

From carbon markets to carbon capture, these practices are not neutral: this seminar will dig into the contested narratives of how carbon should be managed, and critically interrogates the spatial choices that will underpin the energy system of the future.

Course Description

What is the environment and when did it come to be? Is the environment different from nature? If so how? If not, why not? These days, perhaps, we think of the environment as something that we inhabit, shape, experience, destroy. This course explores the changing relationships between human beings and the natural world from early history to the present. We will consider the various ways humans across the globe have interacted with and modified the natural world by using fire, domesticating plants and animals, extracting minerals and energy, designing petro-chemicals, splitting atoms and leaving behind wastes of all sorts. Together we consider the impacts, ranging from population expansion to species extinctions and climate change. We examine how human interactions with the natural world relate to broader cultural processes such as religion, colonialism and capitalism, and why it is important to understand the past, even the deep past, in order to rise to the challenges of the present.

Course Description

This seminar examines the human and environmental consequences of violent conflict from the South African War at the beginning of the 20th century to the War on Terror. War violently transforms the social and physical environment. War reshuffles ideologies, reimagines futures and reshapes alliances, destroys bodies, spaces, societies, habitats, ecosystems and cultures. And of course, there’s no war that doesn’t produce a whole host of wastes, and as a result, inspires a multitude of strategies to combat and eradicate them. In this course, we approach war as an engine of destruction and transformation rather than as politics gone awry. The wastes of war will serve as our focal point as we study the new worlds (technological, social and environmental) that war not merely leaves in its wake but systematically generates. Critically examining two key categories – “waste” and “war” in tandem, we discover how together they fundamentally restructure our social, cultural and natural worlds in unexpected ways.

In less than half a decade, the idea that "nature" possesses inalienable rights akin to human rights has gone from a strictly theoretical concept to the basis of policy changes in several countries and U.S. municipalities. This first-year seminar will introduce students to current legal, political, ethical, and practical debates about the implementation and impacts of granting “rights to nature” in these different contexts. We will begin by examining how the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) supported citizens of Tamaqua, Pennsylvania to write the world's first local "rights of nature" ordinance. We will then go on to compare the politics of "rights of nature" cases in Ecuador, New Zealand, India, and Colombia, and beyond. We will pay particular attention to the way biocentric constitutional moves may transform concepts and understandings of environmental justice and socio-environmental conflicts. In particular, how the recognition of "nature" as a victim of war may transform understandings of violence, and hence, approaches to constructing peace and engaging and reparative and restorative practices within the larger framework of planetary and community efforts to mitigate climate change. Lastly, we will explore the possibilities and tensions between community decision-making, the "rights of nature," and national level policies regarding the intensification of extractive activities, questions of territorial ordinance, struggles over environmental racism, and the colonial impacts of pollution.  Beyond social science or legal documents, we will also engage with literary texts and films to help us explore these issues. The final project for this seminar will integrate multimodal methods with contemporary environmental issues to experiment with doing public engaged environmental humanities work.  

This seminar fulfills the Sector 1 (Society) General Education requirement.

This course is a writing workshop in which we contemplate the future of our fragile planet. Each student will engage with key issues facing society in the Anthropocene—the geologic epoch in which humans have come to recognize their own decisive impact on processes such as climate and evolution that until recently have been considered phenomena of "nature." You will tackle issues that are front-page news, in formats that range from the hard-news "science" story to the op-ed and editorial, to the journalistic profile. You will develop and argue fact-based opinion pieces on such questions as: Should we let some endangered species die out? Should genetic engineers proceed with research on the editing of human germline cells? Is it ethical to attempt to geo-engineer the climate, and if so, at what point in the current warming cycle? More generally: can or should we ever seek to impose limits or controls on scientific research and discovery? In addition to a 2,000-word profile of a scientist or tech developer at work in his/her lab, you will write and rewrite three op-eds and a personal essay over the course of the term, and submit revised drafts in a final portfolio at the end of the term.

http://writing.upenn.edu/cw/courses20a.php#158.401

Can the humanities help us think differently about the forest? What happens if we imagine forests as the agents of their own stories? At a time when humans seem unable to curb the destructive practices that place themselves, biodiversity, and forests at risk, literature and film, myth and fairy tale, give us access to a history of the complex inter-relationship between forests and humanity. This course sets a wide range of forest-related literature and film from around the world in conversation with environmental history and current environmental issues.

Discussions about the urban forest and tree canopy, carbon sequestration, sustainability, and tree adoption programs are becoming more prevalent by the day. In this course we will look at the evolution of this green heritage in our designed landscapes. The course deals with tree landscapes of a variety of scales and explores the different meanings and functions that these landscapes and their designs have embodied at different moments of time. From a single tree to tree rows, clumps, grids, quincunx, groves, woods, and forests, trees have been dominant features in our landscapes for millennia. Trees have been planted and uprooted to stake out territory and create place, and they have been used to forge and obscure identities. They have provided sustenance and essential building and design materials. They have been the origin and subject of myths and legends, and of war and peace. Trees have inspired artists, musicians, architects, designers, gardeners, and scientists, and they are what many designed landscapes are made of. Questions that will be addressed include the following: what is the relationship between trees and cities, planting and building, forestry and urbanization? What role have trees played in the definition of nature conservation and preservation? How has the preoccupation with trees contributed to scientific advancement? What role have trees played in fostering local, regional and national identities, in political diplomacy, and how have they promoted xenophobia? How have they been used to create different types of tree landscapes like forest gardens, arboreta, nurseries, sacred groves and woodland cemeteries, and how have trees been represented in various media and at different times? Studying trees in time and place offers the opportunity to address these and many other questions and topics that straddle landscape, environmental, forest, and cultural history, and that connect the human with the non-human, the local with the global, as well as micro- and macro histories. The course will include guest lectures, site visits, and seminar discussions that will build upon the course readings. Students will contribute to a weekly course blog and work on a research paper related to the course content that will be presented in class. There are no prerequisites.