SPRING COURSE 2012
SIS-315.001
CONTEMPLATION AND POLITICAL CHANGE
(Tuesdays 11:45-2:25)
Professor Paul Wapner
(an advanced undergraduate course for students committed to environmental protection;
Prerequisite: SIS-388, “International Environmental Politics” or permission of the professor)
How do we best address environmental issues? What types of activism are most effective at shifting structures of power? How can we, as unique individuals, find our deepest engagement with environmental change?
This course explores the dynamics of environmental activism. Students will undertake projects aimed at addressing climate change, loss of biological diversity, fresh water scarcity, or pollution. In doing so, they will work to alter widespread practices at the university and beyond, and explore their own understandings of political engagement and internal growth.
For centuries, thinkers and activists have wrestled with the question of political change. Is genuine change a matter of altering structures of power, or adopting a different internal attitude to the world? This course places studentsat the center of such questioning by investigating the interface between political engagement and self-understanding. The course utilizes contemplative practices such as meditation, yoga, journaling and so forth as well as traditional methodologies to explore the relationship between external and internal environmental change.
SIS-315.001
CONTEMPLATION AND POLITICAL CHANGE
(Tuesdays 11:45-2:25)
Professor Paul Wapner
(an advanced undergraduate course for students committed to environmental protection;
Prerequisite: SIS-388, “International Environmental Politics” or permission of the professor)
How do we best address environmental issues? What types of activism are most effective at shifting structures of power? How can we, as unique individuals, find our deepest engagement with environmental change?
This course explores the dynamics of environmental activism. Students will undertake projects aimed at addressing climate change, loss of biological diversity, fresh water scarcity, or pollution. In doing so, they will work to alter widespread practices at the university and beyond, and explore their own understandings of political engagement and internal growth.
For centuries, thinkers and activists have wrestled with the question of political change. Is genuine change a matter of altering structures of power, or adopting a different internal attitude to the world? This course places studentsat the center of such questioning by investigating the interface between political engagement and self-understanding. The course utilizes contemplative practices such as meditation, yoga, journaling and so forth as well as traditional methodologies to explore the relationship between external and internal environmental change.
