Courses

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 50AC, 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 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...

GEOG 37, The Politics of Science and Technology

Catalog Description: This course examines how shifting understandings of science and technology have radically remade some of our most basic social and biological categories and concepts. The course explores the field of science and technology studies. In particular, students will explore formations and understandings of truth, objectivity, universality of science and technology, and the consequences of these cultural formations in contemporary debates around the world.

Units: 4.0

Prerequisites: None...

GEOG 4, 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: 4.0

Prerequisites: None

Formats:

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

Summer: 6 weeks - 7.5 hours of lecture per week...

GEOG 31, Justice, Nature, and the Geographies of Identity

Catalog Description: The intersection of nature, identity, and politics pepper the pages of newspapers almost every day from stories of toxic waste sites, crime, genetic engineering to indigenous struggles, and terrorist tendencies. In all these and many other cases, ideas of race, class, and gender intersect with ideas of nature and geography in often tenacious and troubling ways. Our approach will be to understand these traditional ideas of environmental justice as well as to examine less traditional sites of environmental justice such as the...

GEOG 181, Urban Field Study

Catalog Description: Introduction to the metropolitan Bay Area: its history, economy, social makeup. Evolution of urban landscapes and spatial patterns. Social justice and conflict in the city. Business and industry location, real estate and housing, producing and consuming in the city. Regional characteristics of class, race, gender and politics.

Units: 4.0

Prerequisites: Consent of instructor

Formats:

Fall and/or Spring: 15 weeks - 9 hours of...

GEOG 182, Field Study of Buildings and Cities

Catalog Description: Traveling on foot and by BART—and with on-site lectures and discussions about architecture, urban design, cultural landscapes, and spatial patterns in Berkeley, Oakland, San Francisco, and Pleasanton—students in this course will explore the historical geography of the American city since 1850. Enrollment limited to 25 students. No pre-requisites. Both undergraduate and graduate students are welcome.

Units: 4.0

Prerequisites: None

Formats: ...

GEOG 145, Platform Geographies

Catalog Description: This course explores how digital platforms are reshaping urban and rural geographies. Theories of city and country, the history and current state of platforms, and connections between technology and social hierarchies are the foundation for this course. We examine smart cities and rural data centers, logistics landscapes, gig work and ‘the hustle economy’, property technologies and gentrification, and digitized policing and carceral geographies. Students will critically reflect on notions of city and country and the role of...