Courses

GEOG C55, Introduction to Central Asia

Catalog Description: This course will introduce the student not only to ancient and modern Central Asia, but also to the role played by the region in the shaping of the history of neighboring regions and regimes. The course will outline the history, languages, ethnicities, religions, and archaeology of the region and will acquaint the student with the historical foundations of some of the political, social and economic challenges for contemporary post-Soviet Central Asian republics.

Units: 3.0

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GEOG C32, Introduction to Global Studies

Catalog Description: This course is designed as an introduction to Global Studies. Using a social science approach, the course prepares students to think critically about issues of international development, conflict, and peace in a variety of societies around the world. As such, it provides students with a basic theoretical introduction to the impact of global interaction as well as an opportunity to explore such interaction in a variety of case studies.

Units: 4.0

Prerequisites: None

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GEOG N20, Globalization

Catalog Description: Global economics and politics are undergoing a revolution. Transnational enterprises, international trade, and digitized finance are merging its formerly separate national economies. New regional and transnational treaties and institutions, from the EU and NAFTA to the IMF, the WTO and the World Bank, are arising to regulate the new global economy. Power is being transferred from national states to these institutions, not always smoothly or in predictable ways. This course is about this medley.

Units: 3...

GEOG 32, Global Geographies of Imperialism

Catalog Description: European, Japanese, and American empires have covered large portions of the surface of the earth and collectively transformed the lives of billions of people. Today, China is also increasingly influential at the global scale. Focusing on the twentieth century into the present moment, this survey course explores global geographies of imperialism and hegemonic transitions. What drives imperialism? Are militarism and war inherent to global capitalism? How do historical relations of colonialism relate to uneven capitalist...

GEOG 70AC, The Urban Experience: Race, Class, Gender & the America City

Catalog Description: In this course, students will observe and analyze how the American city has been built, experienced, imagined, and transformed. Using recent scholarship and primary sources, we will track the historical evolution of the city and assess change and continuity in major themes of urban life: race, gender, and difference, industry and labor, community and culture, and power and politics. These themes become increasingly intertwined throughout the course. We will focus on the particularities of place and the experiences of ordinary...

GEOG 20, Globalization

Catalog Description: How do processes of production, exchange and consumption work in our contemporary era of volatility and fragility? This course takes a historical and geographical approach to understand how areas of the world have been incorporated into contemporary global processes differently.

Units: 4.0

Prerequisites: None

Formats:

Fall and/or Spring: 15 weeks - 3 hours of lecture and 1 hour of discussion per week

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GEOG N50AC, California

Catalog Description: California had been called "the great exception" and "America, only more so." Yet few of us pay attention to its distinctive traits and to its effects beyond our borders. California may be "a state of mind," but it is also the most dynamic place in the most powerful country in the world, and would be the 8th largest economy if it were a country. Its wealth has been built on mining, agriculture, industry, trade, and finance. Natural abundance and geographic advantage have played their parts, but the state's greatest resource has...

GEOG 40, Introduction to Earth System Science

Catalog Description: The goals of this introductory Earth System Science course are to achieve a scientific understanding of important problems in global environmental change and to learn how to analyze a complex system using scientific methods. Earth System Science is an interdisciplinary field that describes the cycling of energy and matter between the different spheres (atmosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere, cryosphere, and lithosphere) of the earth system. Under the overarching themes of human-induced climate change, stratospheric ozone depletion...

GEOG N4, World Peoples and Cultural Environments

Catalog Description: Historical and contemporary cultural-environmental patterns. The development and spread of cultural adaptations, human use of resources, transformation and creation of human environments.

Units: 3.0

Prerequisites: None

Credit Restrictions: Students will receive no credit for Geography N4 after completing Geography 4. A deficient grade in Geography 4 maybe removed by taking Geography N4.

Formats:

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GEOG 72AC, The Bay Area

Catalog Description: This course examines the distinct but ill-defined San Francisco Bay Area. Our approach will be neither to simply learn about the individual places that compose the Bay Area nor to study a succession of detached periods of development. Instead, we will think critically about the creations, contestations, and transformations of Bay Area spaces—landscapes, communities, neighborhoods, cities, suburbs, and the metropolitan region. Topics include indigenous geographies, colonialism, industrialization and economic geography, cities...