Students will answer a prescribed number of questions from each list. Exams will be due one week after they are distributed. Three papers on three different course sections. Students will choose which section or thematic division they will address. The third essay can be synthetic in character, taking in the whole of the course, rather than being tied to a single theme.
Essays are due two weeks following the end of discussion on a thematic area.
Both the essays and exams should incorporate course readings and class discussions and demonstrate an ability to synthesize and think critically about course material. Readings and references from outside the course syllabus are not required, but can certainly be used to supplement the syllabus when writing exams and essays. The remainder of the course readings will be collected in a reader. These readings provide a general overview of the concept of political ecology understood as the study of the connections between forms of human governance, human social relations, and relations with non-human nature. 1, Land Degradation and Society, pp.