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Germany is recognized as a world leader in innovative sustainability practices and has long been a site of social and political organization around the environment. This course, taught by Margaret Strair, will explore encounters with and in the natural world in German literature, film, and the visual arts as reflections of or agents of social, political, and technological change. While these encounters are rooted in the philosophical divide between self and world, they embody questions of gender, urbanism, preservation, alienation, marginalization, and “homeland” in ways that galvanize political and social movements locally and nationally, real and imagined. The course is centered on different loci of encounters with the environment, including forests of fairy tales, coastlines and rivers, mountains, mines, agricultural and industrialized urban spaces. It will also consider the human-made environment, waste, and energy sources as places of encounter and transformation.

Students will learn  to use mathematics and mathematical modeling to analyze problems involving sustainability. The course will explore the way energy is used in society (transportation, housing, agriculture) and the potential for renewable energy (solar, wind) to meet society’s needs. We will examine the carbon footprint associated with fossil fuel use and ways, either through conservation or new technologies, to reduce this footprint. In our field trips to Philadelphia and our travels to Freiburg, we will use math to analyze what we are seeing. Taught by Victor Donnay.

Climate change is one of the most challenging political, economic, and scientific problems ever faced by humankind. This course, taught by Carol Hager,  will introduce students to the major political issues raised by climate change locally, nationally, and internationally, paying particular attention to the global implications of actions at the national and subnational levels. It will focus not only on specific problems, but also on solutions; students will learn about some of the technological and policy innovations that are being developed worldwide in response to the challenges of climate change.

This course, taught by Don Barber, examines the fundamental science governing the supply of energy required by human society. Central concepts include the stability (and variability) of Earth's climate, the carbon cycle, and other environmental impacts of energy production. Throughout the semester, we address the following questions:  What resources supply most of the world’s energy today?  How has our reliance during recent centuries on hydrocarbon-based "fossil" fuels altered the global environment?  What alternative (non-carbon-based) energy resources exist?  What opportunities and challenges are associated with switching to renewable and sustainable sources of energy? What does sustainable mean? Might we use less energy but maintain (or improve) living standards?

Taught by Robert Dostal, this course attempts to come to an understanding of what science and technology are, their relation to each other, and to every day life. We try to clarify the issues relevant to these questions by looking at the contemporary debates concerning climate change. Using contemporary work in the philosophy of science, political science, and ethics, we will look at the pairing of science with democracy in the Enlightenment project, and consider the debates concerning climate change as exemplary of the conjunction of science, technology and the good life.