This is an intensive off-campus workshop on the field methods used to study species interactions in terrestrial ecosystems. The setting for the course will be the southeastern United States where we will spend three weeks running from May 15th to June 6th. The majority of the course will have students conducting research at Archbold Biological Station in central Florida. Students will develop short-term research projects on subjects ranging from pollination biology, to herbivore host specialization, to change in plant and insect communities across environmental gradients. The primary goal of student research projects is to help students learn how to frame tractable questions and design field experiments that effectively addressed their questions.
Environmental history is a relatively new kind of historical endeavor.
Students will be guided through research techniques using the Web, using the library with its online and print resources, and using primary materials. In the wake of the environmental movement and the civil rights movement rose a crosscurrent of issues combining problems of social justice and environmental issues. This course explores the terms and ideas of environmental justice by addressing the key issues of environmental racism, distributive justice, political and cultural representation in environmental struggles, alternative theories of justice generated from disenfranchised groups, grassroots politics, and concepts of environmental identity. These issues will be introduced in the context of the U.S. environmental justice movement, then considered in light of international contexts and global political arenas. In the twenty-first century, threats to the good life on planet Earth are unprecedented.