An introduction to moral philosophy as applied to current topics. Some questions to be explored: What sorts of socioeconomic principles are morally justifiable? Does the history of racial injustice in the U.S. create a moral demand for reparations, and if so, what is the best argument for this? What is the relation, if any, between morality and religion? Do animals have moral rights? How should we understand the meaning and value of human life and death? Can abortion sometimes be justified, and if so, how? Is it okay to destroy embryos for stem cell research? Is active euthanasia ever permissible? Is capital punishment justifiable in principle? In practice? Is torture morally permissible in the fight against terrorism? How far does our moral duty to aid distant strangers extend? We will also explore related general questions: Is it always possible for a good enough end to justify bad means? Are there objective facts about right or wrong, or is morality ultimately relative to cultures or times? Are there situations in which every available action is wrong? Can we be morally assessed even for some things that are largely a matter of luck?

Location

Meliora Room 221 (TR 9:40AM - 10:55AM)

A survey of anthropological and philosophical debates over how to explain the apparently irrational beliefs of other people in terms of their different cultural perceptions of the same natural world, or in terms of their different experiences of ontologically different worlds.

Updated description. Delivery mode, meeting pattern and room need to change for the cl section.

Tues/Thurs 2-3:15 (instructor still Gibson). CL = ANTH 205-1 and EHUM 205-1 08/11/2021 DLM

Location

Lattimore Room 441 (MW 4:50PM - 6:05PM)

This course explores the legal, political, and philosophical dimensions of the concept of indigenous people; how it differs from overlapping concepts such as peasantry, race, ethnicity, language, culture, and religion; how its definition varies according to the history of colonialism in different parts of the world; and why this movement gained momentum after the end of the Cold War.

Location

Bausch & Lomb Room 269 (MW 2:00PM - 3:15PM)

This humanities course based in the arts combines the study of performing, visual arts and new media with history and theory to convey a breadth of stories about the human experience of climate change. In this interdisciplinary, collaborative course, students will be introduced to the multi-faceted use of the arts in designing for and expressing a vision for a sustainable future. Working with community partners, our research and story collection in the Adirondack park will be used to inspire projects in the course.  Collaboration, design thinking, and the iterative design process will be used to produce performances and art work that respond to the stories of the changing climate in the Adirondack park. It will move through multiple units of theoretical study as students simultaneously work on their creative projects. The course will include an optional trip to the Adirondack Park to engage with our community partners.

Location

Todd Union Room 107 (TR 12:30PM - 1:45PM)

Rettner Hall Room 307 (TR 12:30PM - 1:45PM)

An examination of international environmental law and policy with a special focus on efforts to address climate change, including the Paris Agreement under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. This course serves as a companion to PSC 246, but PSC 246 is not a prerequisite. The goal of this course is to provide a foundational understanding of this rapidly developing, controversial field. Topics include consideration of the scientific, political, and economic drivers of international environmental law; the variety of tools (e.g., treaties, agreements, soft law,? voluntary incentive programs and market based approaches); and examples of how some international environmental issues have been addressed to date, including efforts to date on climate change. This course will be taught through lectures, discussion, several concise papers, and a group project.

Location

Harkness Room 115 (TR 11:05AM - 12:20PM)

Does it matter where our power comes from? Why or how and to whom? This course uses anthropological case studies of different kinds of energy sources (fossil fuels, nuclear, water, solar, wind) and different kinds of electrification (centralized grids versus micro-grids) around the world to think about the relationship between energy, environments, power, and culture with a specific focus on intersectional gender and sexuality. How do energy practices and cultural norms of racialized gender shape each other in various places around the world, and to what effects? What might empirical attention to how people talk about and use energy help us to understand about the energy transitions and climate crises of the 21st century?

Location

Meliora Room 218 (MW 9:00AM - 10:15AM)

"It’s not climate change—it’s everything change," novelist Margaret Atwood has said. This course uses video and moving image to examine the deep intertwined and intersectional roots of the ecological crisis, from viral pandemics and racial justice to the disruption of our climate and all the other apocalyptic scenarios we currently find ourselves in. To guide our development of eco-cinematic consciousness, we will study the works of Kenyan activist Mangari Maathai, Native American (Chickasaw) writer Linda Hogan, and French philosopher Félix Guattari's foundational text, The Three Ecologies, to understand how ecologies of mind, media, and environment are interrelated and to complicate our understandings of "nature." Student Projects will involve installation, single-channel, sound, and networked-based approaches. Works will be examined within a critical environmental arts framework through readings, critiques, viewings and discussions. Permission of instructor. $75 studio fee. 

Location

Sage Arts Center Room 102 (MW 2:00PM - 4:40PM)

When Spanish and Portuguese explorers stumbled upon a sunny "America" that was new to them, they encountered balmy wonders – armadillos, cities, and gold. By contrast, when the English crashed into their own unseen continent a century later, they landed in the arctic, and found, to some extent, nothing. Icy, unpopulated, commodity- poor, visually and temporally “abstract,” the Far North - a different kind of terra incognita for the early modern imagination than the sun-drenched Indies, offered no clear stuff to be seen or exploited. With this, this seminar contends, the Arctic quietly yet powerfully challenged older narratives of world- and picture-making. Neither a continent, nor an ocean, nor a meteorological circumstance, the Arctic forced explorers, writers, and early artists from England, the Netherlands, and Germany to grapple with a different kind of “ecology.” Here, there were virtually no exotic animals, teeming forests, or enchanting civilizations to study, exploit, or exterminate - yet. In the frigid North, that is, the idea of description as a kind of accumulative endeavor of “representation” - of exoticism as synonymous with abundance - was thrown into question; the North was unsettling not because of dazzling difference, but because of monotonous sameness. Rather than an Eden, to Renaissance travelers the arctic was something like the moon.

Location

Morey Room 524 (T 2:00PM - 4:40PM)