Geography

Terms offered: Summer 2019 Second 6 Week Session
The global pattern of climate, landforms, vegetation, and soils. The relative importance of natural and human-induced change, global warming, forest clearance, accelerated soil erosion, glacial/postglacial climate change and its consequences.
Global Environmental Change: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 2014 10 Week Session, Summer 2014 Second 6 Week Session, Summer 2013 Second 6 Week Session
Historical and contemporary cultural-environmental patterns. The development and spread of cultural adaptations, human use of resources, transformation and creation of human environments.
World Peoples and Cultural Environments: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 2023 Second 6 Week Session, Summer 2022 Second 6 Week Session, Summer 2021 Second 6 Week Session
Historical and contemporary cultural-environmental patterns. The development and spread of cultural adaptations, human use of resources, transformation and creation of human environments.
World Peoples and Cultural Environments: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2018, Fall 2017, Fall 2016
Geography is a way of thinking deeply and expansively about the world we inhabit and this course is designed to transform how you think about, understand and engage in its makings and re-makings.  Ideas central to the field of geography such as space, nature, empire and globalization animate the histories and politics of each of these issues and many other cases.  Our approach will not be to simply learn about the regions of the world, but to think critically and geographically about how region's, peoples and states and other foundational concepts have come into being and how they might be otherwise.
Worldings - Regions, Peoples and States: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022
Geography is a way of thinking deeply and expansively about our place in the world and this course is designed to transform how you think about America though understanding its place within a global context. Through concepts central to the field of geography such as space, nature, empire and globalization we will explore the issues of race, culture, ethnicity that pepper the pages of newspapers almost every day in stories of immigration, police violence, global warming, ethnic cleansing, and terrorism. We explore these issues in a way that will change how you understand both America and the world.
Worldings: Regions, Peoples and States: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2024, Spring 2021, Spring 2020
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.
Globalization: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 2021 First 6 Week Session, Summer 2019 First 6 Week Session, Summer 2018 Second 6 Week Session
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.
Globalization: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2021, Fall 2020
The Freshman Seminar Program has been designed to provide new students with the opportunity to explore an intellectual topic with a faculty member in a small seminar setting. Freshman seminars are offered in all campus departments, and topics vary from department to department and semester to semester. Enrollment limited to 15 freshmen.
Freshman Seminar: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 2020 Second 6 Week Session, Fall 2017, Spring 2014
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 laboratory, the war zone, the urban mall, and the courtroom.
Justice, Nature, and the Geographies of Identity: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Prior to 2007
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 development today at the global scale? The course introduces key theories and debates on the topic of imperialism and explores the themes of race, gender, territory, development, resource extraction, finance, and militarism.
Global Geographies of Imperialism: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2024
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.
Introduction to Global Studies: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2014, Summer 2013 First 6 Week Session, Summer 2012 First 6 Week Session
Problems of Third World poverty and development have come to be seen as inseparable from environmental health and sustainability. The course explores the global and interconnected character of environment and development in the less developed world. Drawing on case studies of the environmental problems of the newly industrializing states, food problems, and environmental security in Africa, and the global consequences of tropical deforestation in Amazonia and carbon dioxide emissions in China, this course explores how growth and stagnation are linked to problems of environmental sustainability.
Global Ecology and Development: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2014, Spring 2012
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.
The Politics of Science and Technology: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Fall 2023
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, and biodiversity loss, we will explore key concepts of solar radiation, plate tectonics, atmospheric and oceanic circulation, and the history of life on Earth.
Introduction to Earth System Science: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Spring 2023
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 been its wealth and diversity of people, who have made it a center of technological and cultural innovation from Hollywood to Silicon Valley. Yet California has a dark side of exploitation and racialization.
California: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 2024 Second 6 Week Session, Summer 2023 Second 6 Week Session, Summer 2021 First 6 Week Session
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 been its wealth and diversity of people, who have made it a center of technological and cultural innovation from Hollywood to Silicon Valley. Yet California has a dark side of exploitation and racialization.
California: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022
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.
Introduction to Central Asia: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2024, Spring 2022, Summer 2021 Second 6 Week Session

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 people but also seek to understand how broader political and economic processes shape the inequalities and opportunities that structure everyday life.
The Urban Experience: Race, Class, Gender & The American City: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Not yet offered
This course examines global warming as both a geophysical and social issue. We will introduce the physical science that explains the problem, from the basic concepts of climate (carbon cycle, greenhouse effect, climate feedbacks) through to the models that project future climate changes and their impacts. Social scientific perspectives will cover the history of climate science, the geographical and political-economic implications of fossil fuels for industrial production, and the regulatory and ethical challenges posed by the current and prospective impacts of global warming. We will provide students with a solid understanding & information base with which to analyze and evaluate ongoing developments and debates surrounding climate change.
Global Warming: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Summer 2024 First 6 Week Session, Spring 2024
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 and suburbs, gentrification and displacement, regional racial formation and place-based identities, and resistance and rebellion.
The Bay Area: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Fall 2023
This course offers an introduction to the increasingly diverse range of geospatial technologies and tools including but not limited to geographical information systems (GIS). Merging theoretical concepts with technical instruction, students will develop critical knowledge and skills in web-mapping, geographic information science and cartography, including how these tools take on and reinforce fundamental geographical concepts and shape our lives, our environments and, increasingly, our futures.
An Introduction to Geospatial Technologies: Mapping, Space and Power: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 2019 8 Week Session, Summer 2018 8 Week Session, Summer 2017 8 Week Session
An introduction to the increasingly diverse range of geospatial technologies and tools including but not limited to geographical information systems (GIS). Via a mix of lecture and lab-based instruction, students will develop knowledge and skills in web-mapping and GIS. How these tools are used to represent fundamental geographic concepts, and the wider socioeconomic context of these technologies will also be explored.
Digital Worlds: An Introduction to Geospatial Technologies: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Prior to 2007
This course introduces students to the many kinds of qualitative and quantitative information, data, and evidence that geographers use across the range of fields of study within geography, and to methods for collecting and analyzing these kinds of information.
Data, Evidence, and Methods in Geographic Inquiry: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2020
Sophomore seminars are small interactive courses offered by faculty members in departments all across the campus. Sophomore seminars offer opportunity for close, regular intellectual contact between faculty members and students in the crucial second year. The topics vary from department to department and semester to semester. Enrollment limited to 15 sophomores.
Sophomore Seminar: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2022
From mapping protests to the polar ice caps, colonialism to crises, board games to the baroque, this course offers an introduction to critical cartography and the politics of maps. Broadly centered on the contemporary carto-politics of the Pacific, each lecture focuses on a different field of mapping - such as protest mapping, ocean mapping or star mapping - comparing the techniques and conceptual underpinnings of cartography as a representational tool. It explores the way in which maps continue to reflect and shape our worlds, how they are used as tools for both description and argumentation across arts, science, engineering and the humanities.
Mapping: Space, Cartography and Power: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2019, Spring 2018, Spring 2017
Data science methods are increasingly important in geography and earth science. This course introduces some of the particular challenges of working with spatial data arising from characteristics specific to such data. These issues will be explored in a series of modules deploying data science methods to investigate contemporary topics in geography and earth science, relating to climate science, hydrology, population census and remote sensing of environment. No prior knowledge is assumed or expected.
Data Science Applications in Geography: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Spring 2023, Spring 2022
Lectures and small group discussion focusing on topics of interest that vary from semester to semester.
Directed Group Study: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 2017 Second 6 Week Session, Fall 1979, Fall 1967
Field course in the cultural geography. Using the landscape as our reference, we will explore the historical transformation of Cuban cities, town, and countryside from colonial times up to the present. Focus our exploration through two particular perspectives: attention to production in key sectors of the Cuban economy at different historical moments, and the ways their attendant forms of labor, ownership, technology, and trade shape the cultural landscape. The other major point of reference for this course is representations of Cuba as a place: what has Cuba stood for over time, to Cubans and to outsiders, and how have these stories played out in the forms and functions of the Cuban land
Field Study of Cuba: Landscapes of Power, Production, Promise: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2022
Taught by faculty from the Departments of Art Practice, Geography, and History of Art, this Big Ideas course is a space where we collectively study, think, and make art about the cataclysmic ecological crises that threaten our planet today. Examining possible notions of the animal, the botanic, the oceanic, the geologic, and the atmospheric, among other themes, the course prompts embodied responses to this urgent moment through complex, experimental, scholarly, and practice-based interventions. The aim is to read human interactions with the planet in relation to the past, present, and future of earthly environments, as shaped by historical processes, resonances, interruptions, and movements.
Art and Ecology: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2011, Spring 2002, Fall 2000
Since the late 1990s, Oakland has experienced considerable racial and economic restructuring. Oakland’s formerly prominent Black population has dwindled precipitously, as the city lost nearly 25% of its Black population since 2010. Cultural institutions, like churches, barbershops, blues clubs, and restaurants that once served its vast working-class population were replaced by trendy shops and hipster outlets. Students will engage the sense of loss and possibility arising in the city as they participate in a series of in-class workshops to learn various field methods. They will also work in neighborhoods with community leaders and groups to document residents’ valued places and how these places have changed over time.

The Black City: Oakland California: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Prior to 2007
Black Geographies considers the concept of geography to examine multiple orientations through engaging critical race, black feminist, diaspora and queer studies. The course covers approaches to the geographical categorization of blackness through two organizing frameworks. The first, the ‘black geographic,’ ‘geography’ serves as a productive analytic for examining the lived experiences, conceptual limits, and theoretical purchase of blackness through the reading of some seminal and contemporary texts by black geographers. The second, ‘geographic blackness,’ considers how blackness as a modality of analysis gives insight and shape to the discipline of geography through texts by non-geographers that engage or invoke geographic themes.
Black Geographic Thought: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 2020 Second 6 Week Session, Fall 1996, Spring 1992
This experiential undergraduate seminar seeks to interrupt traditional managerial discourses about waste that view it as a technocratic problem and instead understand waste as deeply embedded in society, culture, and politics. In this class we will explore the myriad sociocultural, political, and economic processes on “the problem of waste” and also open up the classroom setting to an intimate and immersive engagement with the various lived experiences of people whom inhabit and are entangled ‘with/in/by waste’. To do so, the course combines weekly seminar discussions of key academic texts, supplemented with three ‘discovery experiences’ that speak to the multiple socio-political workings of waste.

Waste Matters: Exploring the Abject, Discarded, and Disposable: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 2021 Second 6 Week Session, Summer 2020 Second 6 Week Session, Summer 1999 10 Week Session
This course surveys the historical relationship between fossil fuels and the capitalist economy. Beginning with the origin of intensive fossil fuel use in the early modern world, and then moving through the industrial epochs of coal and then oil, this course asks how have fossil fuels shaped the trajectory of our modern economic world? Students will investigate the broad, structural impact these resources have had on labor relations, economic development, culture, the environment, politics, and more. Framed around the current, contested transition off of coal, oil, and gas, this course also asks what the future of fossil fuels look like. Will we disentangle ourselves from these sources of energy – what does the future hold?
Geographies of Energy: The Rise and Fall of the Fossil Fuel Economy: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Spring 2022, Spring 2021
This course examines the fundamentally geographic nature of our current, historically unique system of material reproduction—capitalism—and how capitalist logics have shaped places and forms of life over the course of the system’s growth and change. We will explore how capitalist processes shape the rise (and inevitable fall) of places, techniques, social worlds, and divisions of labor, and pay close attention to the power relations and spatial organization that accompany them. The course provides a grounding in critical perspectives such as the Marxian, Black radical, and feminist traditions to equip students with theoretical tools to understand and interpret the spatiality of contemporary capitalism.
Critical Economic Geographies: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2023
This course examines whether the convergence between the ‘new Right’ and the ‘new Left’ has successfully addressed the central challenge of contemporary global development studies. It asks students to assess the multiple, nonlinear, and interconnected paths of change in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East that are now taking place. It explores the context of intensified global integration and capitalist development. Students will consider what changes in this context mean for larger social change, especially given ongoing global economic crises and rapidly evolving relations.
Global Development: Theory, History, Geography: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Prior to 2007
This writing-intensive course engages all fields of inquiry and forms of evidence in the geographies of climate change. Course topics include impacts on human and biophysical systems; mitigation and adaptation; global, regional and local policy efforts; gender and climate; and environmental justice and human rights. Regional and historical approaches underlie all topics.
Students will use common rhetorical strategies in writing; trans-disciplinary forms of evidence for characterizing, analyzing, narrating and explaining; additional focus on the arguments, evidence, and rhetorical strategies that climate skeptics use. Includes a research project. Open to non-majors.

Thinking Globally, Acting Regionally: Geographies of Climate Change: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2015, Fall 2013
Postcolonial studies focus on how processes of colonialism/imperialism continue even after the formal dissolution of empire. A central argument of this course is that critical human geography can make important contributions to understanding the interconnections between forces at play in different parts of the world. Drawing on concepts of space, place, culture, power, and difference, its purpose is to provide a set of tools for grappling with the conditions in which we find ourselves, and for thinking about the possibilities for social change.
Postcolonial Geographies: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2021, Spring 2020
This course explores historical, cultural, and socio-economic geographies of cities, city life, and the organization of metropolitan political power. It is primarily focused on the U.S., but will draw on select examples from abroad. We will investigate urbanization as a general process and the resulting physical, social, cultural, and political economic forms of cities and examine the ways that cities have addressed tensions emerging from segregation and urban renewal. We will also look at both the ways in which social inequality is reinforced through the politics, policies, and design of the built environment as well as strategies for fostering and nurturing inclusive and equitable urban spaces through city design and policy.
Urban Sites and City Life: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2014, Spring 2010, Spring 2009
The American city, palimpsest of a nation. It all comes together in the modern metropolis: economy, society, politics, culture, and geography. Cities as the economic engines of capitalism, centers of industry, finance, business, consumption, and innovation. Cities as political powers and political pawns, and the government of cities, suburbs, and metropolitan areas. Cities as magnificent constructs, built of concrete, credit and land rents, from skyscrapers to housing tracts, freeways to shopping malls, airports to open spaces. Cities as landscapes of social division by class, race and nationality, and the turf battles from mean ghetto streets to the hideaways of privilege.
The American City: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2023
This is a practice-based course in which students will record, edit, and produce audio works that document and interpret the built environment and people in public places throughout Oakland and Berkeley. Through the process of making location recordings, analyzing those recordings, composing them into autonomous works, and critiquing them along the way, this course will engage with questions of how sound can help us understand the people we encounter and the spaces we move through everyday.
Sonic Geographies: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2024
What makes a film geographical? How can we explore humans’ relationships to their environment through sound and image? How might we make nonfiction films which foreground place and give it actual agency and voice? How can we use documentary film practices to depict place, culture, society, gesture, movement, rhythm and flow in new and exciting ways? This is a production workshop where each student will conceptualize, shoot, and edit one short documentary film project that centralizes some aspect/s of geographic thought. This course is geared towards first time filmmakers. All film projects must fit the theme designated by the instructor, per term.
Geographic Film Production: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2020
This course explores oceanic connections, movements, livelihoods, developments and imaginations in the modern world. We read the oceanic novel Moby Dick and think across themes including the geography of the Mediterranean, the riotous Atlantic, the imperial Pacific, the anticolonial Caribbean and the Muslim Indian Ocean; and we look at ports, containers, oceanic infrastructure and precarious marine livelihoods today. We read thinkers from our oceanic planet to imagine an oceanic way of thinking.
Ocean Worlds: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2022
How do human populations organize and alter natural resources and ecosystems to produce food? The role of agriculture in the world economy, national development, and environmental degradation in the Global North and the Global South. The origins of scarcity and abundance, population growth, hunger and obesity, and poverty.
Food and the Environment: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 2024 First 6 Week Session, Summer 2023 First 6 Week Session, Summer 2022 First 6 Week Session
How do human populations organize and alter natural resources and ecosystems to produce food? The role of agriculture in the world economy, national development, and environmental degradation in the Global North and the Global South. The origins of scarcity and abundance, population growth, hunger and obesity, and poverty.
Food and the Environment: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Spring 2018, Spring 2016
Distribution, dynamics, and use of water resources in the global environment. Water scarcity, water rights, and water wars. The terrestrial hydrologic cycle. Contemporary environmental issues in water resource management, including droughts, floods, saltwater intrusion, water contamination and remediation, river restoration, hydraulic fracturing, dams, and engineering of waterways. The role of water in ecosystem processes and geomorphology. How water resources are measured and monitored. Basic water resource calculations. Effects of climate change on water quantity, quality, and timing.
Water Resources and the Environment: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022
A quantitative introduction to the hydrology of the terrestrial environment including lower atmosphere, watersheds, lakes, and streams. All aspects of the hydrologic cycle, including precipitation, infiltration, evapotranspiration, overland flow, streamflow, and groundwater flow. Chemistry and dating of groundwater and surface water. Development of quantitative insights through problem solving and use of simple models. This course requires one field experiment and several group computer lab assignments.
Terrestrial Hydrology: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2018, Spring 2016, Spring 2015
Conceptualizing global environmental problems is difficult because of the complexity of the issues, the magnitude of the problems, and the different time scales of action versus reaction. These issues apply both to the natural earth system as well as human societies. This course will examine the scientific basis underlying the largest environmental threats, and then reframe the issues to explore the societal basis of those problems. Class is not open to freshmen.
Top Ten Global Environmental Problems: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022
Political factors affecting ecological conditions in the Third World. Topics include environmental degradation, migrations, agricultural production, role of international aid, divergence in standard of living, political power, participation and decision making, access to resources, global environmental policies and treaties, political strife and war.
Global Environmental Politics: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022, Fall 2020
This course examines the processes that determine the structure and circulation of the Earth's atmosphere and ocean, and how they control regional and global climate. The approach is deductive rather than descriptive: to determine the properties and behavior of the atmosphere and ocean based on the laws of physics and fluid dynamics. Topics will include interaction between radiation and atmospheric composition; the role of water in the energy and radiation balance; governing equations for atmospheric and oceanic motion, mass conservation, and thermodynamic energy balance; geostrophic flow, quasigeostrophic motion, baroclinic instability, and dynamics of extratropical cyclones and wind-driven ocean gyres.
Atmosphere, Ocean, and Climate Dynamics: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2023, Spring 2022
Understanding the physical characteristics of the Earth's surface, and the processes active on it, is essential for maintaining the long-term health of the environment, and for appreciating the unique, defining qualities of geographic regions. In this course, we build an understanding of global tectonics, rivers, hillslopes, and coastlines and discover how these act in concert with the underlying geologic framework to produce the magnificent landscapes of our planet. Through our review of formative processes, we learn how physical landscapes change and are susceptible to human modifications, which are often unintentional.
Physical Landscapes: Process and Form: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2024, Fall 2022, Fall 2021
In this course we review the physical landscapes and surface processes in extreme environments: hot arid regions, glacial and periglacial landscapes, and karst terrane. Using this knowledge, plus an understanding of tectonics and temperate watersheds (gained from prerequisite courses), we explore how unique combinations of geomorphic processes acting on tectonic and structural provinces have created the spectacular and diverse landscapes of North America. Regions to be explored include the Colorado Plateau, Sierra Nevada, North Cascades, Northern and Southern Rockies, Great Plains, Appalachian Highlands, and Mississippi Delta.
Physiography and Geomorphologic Extremes: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2023, Fall 2022
The course presents a conceptual basis for understanding of the workings of the global climate system, and how they conspire to bring about change. The goal is to give the student a climate dynamics basis for understanding global climate change. Covered topics include observations of the climate system; the earth's energy balance; atmospheric radiative transfer; atmospheric circulation; the role of the ocean and the cryosphere; climate variability on various timescales; climate feedbacks and climate change.
Global Climate Variability and Change: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2023, Spring 2022
How does the chemical makeup of Earth make it suitable for life? And how does life in turn alter the chemistry of our planet? Biogeochemistry is the field of science that explores the imprint of biota (including humans) on the chemistry of the ocean, land and atmosphere. This interdisciplinary field addresses global problems, including climate change feedbacks, air quality, land use change, and marine ecosystem health. We will provide an overview of the major biogeochemical cycles, discuss the biogeochemistry of major ecosystems, and introduce the major biogeochemical questions being asked today. We also cover measurement techniques, including hands-on activities to introduce students to experimental methods and data analysis.
Global Change Biogeochemistry: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2019, Spring 2011, Fall 2008
Weather development in relation to different scales of atmospheric circulation including analysis and forecasting with examples from the Northeastern Pacific-Western North American area.
Principles of Meteorology: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2022, Fall 2021, Fall 2013
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 technology in producing urban-rural landscapes, examine the uneven socio-spatial consequences of technology, and reflect on how to build digital geographies that refuse domination, extraction, and predatory inclusion.
Platform Geographies: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2020, Spring 2018, Spring 2016, Spring 2015
For undergraduates interested in improving their ability to communicate their scientific knowledge by teaching ocean science in elementary schools or science centers/aquariums. The course will combine instruction in inquiry-based teaching methods and learning pedagogy with six weeks of supervised teaching experience in a local school classroom or the Lawrence Hall of Science with a partner. Thus, students will practice communicating scientific knowledge and receive mentoring on how to improve their presentations.
Communicating Ocean Science: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2022, Fall 2020, Fall 2018
For upper division undergraduate students interested in improving their conceptual understanding of climate science and climate change through engaging in activities, demonstrations, and discussions, while also developing their science communication skills to advance the public’s climate literacy. The course will combine science content, active teaching and learning methods based on how people learn, and how to engage in effective interactions.
Communicating Climate Science: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2022, Fall 2021
The course will provide a historical background for the field of biogeography and the ecological foundations needed to understand the distribution and abundance of species and their changes over time. It will also discuss developing technologies (including genomic tools and environmental models) together with the availability of big data and increasingly sophisticated analytical tools to examine the relevance of the field to global change biology, conservation, and invasion biology, as well as sustainable food systems and ecosystem services.
Biogeography: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2023, Fall 2022, Fall 2021
This course provides a very basic description of atmospheric physics and dynamics at the large scale, followed by region-specific climate systems and response. We examine the inter-relationships between the role of climate variations and change to impacts, risk and adaptation. Each week's reading will be integrated into class participation with examples from recent weather events. Class begins with a brief weather review that focuses on a specific geographic region, followed by the topic of the day, a break, and class discussion of weather events and impacts related to the topic. There will be four homework sets, four quizzes, a mid-term and final exam.
Climates of the World: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2024, Spring 2023, Spring 2022
Climate impacts and risk analysis is the study of weather-related catastrophes such as heat waves, floods, droughts, fires, and tropical cyclones, and builds on material from GEOG 149A: Climates of the World.
We will review how large-scale climate and local weather patterns set up, learn detection and attribution to climate change, risk probabilities and the types of impacts incurred.
Climate Impacts and Risk Analysis: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2023, Spring 2023
An in-depth study of taxonomy, with a special focus on plants. We will first learn how plants are classified and how they fit into the tree of life, and what practical challenges exist for current practitioners of botany. Next, we will study the history of the ideas underlying classification and their connections to colonial, extractivist empire-building activities since Linnaeus. Finally, we will work to create a new taxonomy that acknowledges and imagines other relationships with plants.
Post-Apocalyptic Botany: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2022, Fall 2011, Summer 1997 10 Week Session
This course examines the the spatial configurations of inequality and poverty and their relationship to race through an analysis of the historical, theoretical and ethnographic conceptualizations, practices, and lived experiences of that relationship. The course will cover the topics of race, space, and inequality through four interwoven thematic lenses of formation, implementation, normalization, and resistances.
Race, Space, and Inequality: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2020, Spring 2019, Spring 2018
This course examines the the spatial configurations of inequality and poverty and their relationship to race through an analysis of the historical, theoretical and ethnographic conceptualizations, practices, and lived experiences of that relationship. The course will cover the topics of race, space, and inequality through four interwoven thematic lenses of formation, implementation, normalization, and resistances.
Race, Space, and Inequality: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Prior to 2007
This course seeks to trace the rise of the anthropogenic epoch as a political epistemology, changing material milieu, and amorphous and contested political signifier. The notion of the Anthropocene challenges the very boundaries of nature and culture that have plagued and defined modernity. Natural forces and inanimate objects from storms and bodies, ocean flows and river currents, soil layers and chemical reactions are more and more commonly understood as always already natural/cultural. What are the differential ways that the universal categories of the human at the heart of the concept of the Anthropocene mask the differential responsibility and liability for these epochal changes?

Decolonizing Nature: Race, Empire and the Environment: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2014, Fall 2012, Spring 2011, Fall 2004
A comparative survey of the peoples and cultures of the seven countries of the Central American Isthmus from a historical and contemporary perspective.
Central American Peoples and Cultures: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2019, Fall 2018, Fall 2017
The southern border--from California to Florida--is the longest physical divide between the First and Third Worlds. This course will examine the border as a distinct landscape where North-South relations take on a specific spatial and cultural dimension, and as a region which has been the testing ground for such issues as free trade, immigration, and ethnic politics.
The Southern Border: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2016, Spring 1997, Spring 1996
Introduces ways of seeing and interpreting American histories and cultures, as revealed in everyday built surroundings--homes, highways, farms, factories, stores, recreation areas, small towns, city districts and regions. Encourages students to read landscapes as records of past and present social relations, and to speculate for themselves about cultural meaning.
American Cultural Landscapes: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022
What is America as a landscape and a place, and how do we know it when we see it? This course seeks to address such questions, to introduce ways of seeing and interpreting American histories and cultures, as revealed in everyday built surroundings—homes, highways, farms, factories, stores, recreation areas, small towns, city districts, and regions. It does so through the lens of cultural geography, an interdisciplinary practice that developed, in part, here at Berkeley. Our goal in this course is thus twofold: First, to develop literacy in the role of space and place in American culture, and second to develop a working knowledge of cultural geography as a practice.
The American Landscape: Place, Power and Culture: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2014, Fall 2013, Fall 2012, Fall 2011
Introduces ways of seeing and interpreting American histories and cultures, as revealed in everyday built surroundings-- houses, highways, farms, factories, stores, recreation areas, small towns, city districts, and regions. Encourages students to read landscapes as records of past and present social relations and to speculate for themselves about cultural meaning.
American Cultural Landscapes, 1600 to 1900: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2017, Spring 2015, Spring 2014
Introduces ways of seeing and interpreting American histories and cultures, as revealed in everyday built surroundings--homes, highways, farms, factories, stores, recreation areas, small towns, city districts, and regions. Encourages students to read landscapes as records of past and present social relations, and to speculate for themselves about cultural meaning.
American Cultural Landscapes, 1900 to Present: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 1996
Maps are important tools for our daily activities and spatial imaginaries; however, the ways in which official and dominant Western maps organized the information about the world occludes other ways of knowing territories. How are these “other” geographies represented? How are maps re-designed and appropriated to visualize different spatialities? In this course, students will be introduced to key themes and design practices in social cartography in Latin America. These reflect on collective or individual mapping practices to represent and increase the visibility of social issues and ways of knowing and being in this region. Previous knowledge of maps not required.
Rethinking Latin American Geographies Through Social Mapping: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 1997, Fall 1995, Fall 1993
This course explores various scales of climate impacts, mitigation, and adaptation from the global to the local through a lens of climate justice, geographies of race, and political ecology. We will explore climate plans such as the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the U.S. National Climate Assessment while also taking a close look at examples of tribal and community-based climate mitigation projects. Students will examine the similarities and differences in climate decision-making and actions at various scales. Students will learn the interconnections between climate processes and the complexities that shape our social and political systems. We will then apply this lens to an analysis of sites across California and beyond.
Climate and Communities: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2023
This course focuses on four issues in contemporary China: (1) the transformation of the socialist state, (2) the environmental politics, (3) the interplay of gender and class in the transitional society, (4) urban expansion and the changing rural-urban dynamics, and (5) global China. Each of these issues will be examined with reference to critical theories of development and histories of China's modernization. This is a lecture course designed mainly for upper level undergraduate students with preliminary background in East Asian-Chinese studies or development studies.
Global China: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2008, Spring 2006
This course offers a geographic survey of race and ethnicity across Latin America, including Californiam, Mesoamerica, Brazil, the Andes, and the Caribbean. The course draws from academic scholarship, creative non-fiction, podcasts, and film in order to weave together critical voices from across the region that speak to racial and ethnic identities. Students will come away with a stronger knowledge of the region’s history and geography, as well as key debates on political, economic and cultural topics concerning Latin American peoples and intellectual movements.
Racial and Ethnic Geographies of Latin America: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2023
This course examines how today’s bounded geographies were shaped by racialized and regionalized discourse and practice, setting the foundation for contemporary struggles over political, economic and social identities along and across Latin America. Specifically, the course incorporates the study of the United States’ historical relationship with Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean in order to understand how these histories map onto the productions of borders, regimes of migration and citizenship, and movements that increasingly articulate a decolonial turn in intellectual thought and within political and social action.

Decolonial Border Geographies: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2024
This course is designed to provide a vehicle for instructors to address a topic with which they are especially concerned; usually more restricted than the subject matter of a regular lecture course. Topics will vary with instructor. See departmental announcements.
Special Topics in Geography: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2018, Fall 2016, Summer 2016 First 6 Week Session
This course is designed to provide a vehicle for instructors to address a topic in physical geography with which they are especially concerned; usually more restricted than the subject matter of a regular lecture course. Topics will vary with instructor. See departmental announcements.
Special Topics in Physical Geography: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2022, Fall 2012, Fall 2011
This course is designed to provide a vehicle for instructors to address a topic in social geography with which they are especially concerned; usually more restricted than the subject matter of a regular lecture course. Topics will vary with instructor. See departmental announcements.
Topics in Social Geography: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2010, Spring 2007
This course is designed to accommodate cross-listed courses offered through other departments, the content of which is applicable to geography majors. Content and unit values vary from course to course.
Cross-listed Topics in Human Geography: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2018, Fall 2015, Fall 2014
A reading and research seminar for undergraduate students. Topics will vary with instructor.
Undergraduate Seminars: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024
This course will introduce the ways race and racism are relevant to ecological processes and management through topics that broadly span both environmental and climate justice, while also exploring how we can understand non-dominant ways of knowing and relating to the environment, particularly focusing on Black and Indigenous ecologies and ecological relationships. In this course, students will learn the interconnections between ecological processes and the complexities that shape our social world. Students will learn how to apply a racial ecologies lens to the world around them. We will examine traditional and emerging directions in the fields of Political Ecology, Environmental and Climate Justice, Geographies of
race, and more.
Racial Ecologies: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2016
In the environmental and biological sciences, one of the biggest challenges in transitioning from student to researcher is learning how to measure something without an off-the-shelf device. This course will provide the theoretical background and the practice of building a Gas Chromatograph (GC) system for environmental research. The first semester is for students who seek to develop fundamental skills in instrumental development and design. The second semester (c179b) is only open to those who have taken this first semester course and will entail the construction of a working gas chromatograph system. This class will be especially useful for students who wish to pursue research following graduation.
GC-Maker Lab I: Skills and Theory: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2017
In the environmental and biological sciences, one of the biggest challenges in transitioning from student to researcher is learning how to measure something without an off-the-shelf device. This course will involve the actual building a gas chromatograph (GC) system for environmental research. In addition, we will provide the option of building a mini datalogging sensor for measuring basic environmental parameters using the Arduino platform. This course offered in the spring semester is only open to those who have taken this first semester course (c179A), which covers the fundamental skills required to undertake this project. This class is designed for upper division undergraduates to early graduate students.
GC-Maker Lab II: Instrument development: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2023
Field introduction to geomorphology, biogeography, and California landscapes. Students conduct field experiments and mapping exercises. Results of field projects are analyzed and presented as a technical report. Oral field reports are required for some trips.
Field Methods for Physical Geography: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2024
In this course, we will critically “read" urban landscapes in the Bay Area. Walking tours, on-site lectures, individual wanderings, and archival research will explore built environments, spatial histories, and broader patterns of urbanism in Berkeley, San Francisco, Emeryville, Oakland, Pleasanton, and beyond. At every juncture, we will consider the dynamic interrelationships between built form and everyday life, becoming attuned to the power of landscape to both express and suppress identities and opportunities. We will travel by BART and on foot (~3 miles of walking per class!) to pursue ways to think critically about the spaces we inhabit, what remains to be explored, and the contours of our future.
Urban Field Study: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 2024 First 6 Week Session, Summer 2022 First 6 Week Session, Summer 2019 First 6 Week Session
In this course you will learn how to ‘read’ urban landscapes in Berkeley, San Francisco, Emeryville, Oakland, and Pleasanton. Walking tours, on-site lectures, and ongoing discussions will explore cultural landscapes, architecture, urban design, and Bay Area spatial histories. With close observations of local landscapes and historical geographies, you see in the particulars of the Bay Area general principles of American urbanization. And by combining these three elements—landscape, region, and urbanization—you will learn to appreciate the magnificent cacophony of places, the peculiar pleasures and struggles of the Bay Region, and the banal
beauty of ordinary landscapes. We will travel on foot and by BART. Undergrad and grad are welcome.
Field Study of Buildings and Cities: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022
This course introduces the art, science and politics of making maps in a mediated world. Much of the course focuses on key theories, concepts, principles in map design, visualization and communication, while building deeper theoretical, critical and experimental skills needed for the challenges of the future. This includes theories of new media, the history of cartography, the impact of the internet on critical, Indigenous and counter- approaches to mapping, contemporary media and cartographic arts including the experimental, expressive and artistic, and the technicalities of visualizing quantitative data through (carto)graphic design.
Cartographic Representation: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Not yet offered
This course introduces the art, science and politics of making maps in a mediated world. Much of the course focuses on key theories, concepts, principles in map design, visualization and communication, while building deeper theoretical, critical and experimental skills needed for the challenges of the future. This includes theories of new media, the history of cartography, the impact of the internet on critical, Indigenous and counter- approaches to mapping, contemporary media and cartographic arts including the experimental, expressive and artistic, and the technicalities of visualizing quantitative data through (carto)graphic design.
Cartographic Representation: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2023, Spring 2022
This lecture-lab course is focused on Earth system remote sensing applications, including a survey of methods and an accompanying lab. This first part of the course will cover general principles, image acquisition and interpretation, and analytical approaches. The second part will cover global change remote sensing applications that will include terrestrial ecosystems, Earth sciences, the hydrosphere, and human land-use.
Earth System Remote Sensing: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2019, Summer 1999 10 Week Session, Summer 1998 10 Week Session
This course will focus on the application of cartographic principles to the design of interactive web maps. We will explore the capabilities and limits of web tools for representing geographic data and examine how recent developments in geospatial technologies have influenced how we both use and produce maps. Students will create their own thematic web maps.
Web Cartography: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2018, Spring 2018, Spring 2017
A spatial analytic approach to digital mapping and GIS. Given that recording the geolocation of scientific, business and social data is now routine, the question of what we can learn from the spatial aspect of data arises. This class looks at challenges in analyzing spatial data, particularly scale and spatial dependence. Various methods are considered such as hotspot detection, interpolation, and map overlay. The emphasis throughout is hands on and practical rather than theoretical.

Geographic Information Analysis: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022
This course introduces the student to the rapidly expanding field of Geographic Information Systems (GIS). It addresses both theory and application and provides the student with a dynamic analytical framework within which temporal and spatial data and information is gathered, integrated, interpreted, and manipulated. It emphasizes a conceptual appreciation of GIS and offers an opportunity to apply some of those concepts to contemporary geographical and planning issues.
Geographic Information Science: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Summer 2024 Second 6 Week Session, Spring 2024
This is a practice-based course in which students will shoot and edit photographic works that document and interpret the landscape and people along San Pablo Avenue from Oakland to Hercules, CA. Through the process of making photographs, analyzing them, editing them into a body of work, and critiquing them along the way, this course will
engage with questions of how photography can help us understand the people we encounter and the spaces we move through everyday.
Visual Geography: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2024, Fall 2023, Spring 2023
Required for Honors in Geography. Students will write a thesis. One or two semesters, at the instructor's option; if two semesters, credit and grade to be awarded upon completion of the sequence.
Honors Course: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2024, Fall 2023, Spring 2023
Required for Honors in Geography. Students will write a thesis. One or two semesters, at the instructor's option; if two semesters, credit and grade to be awarded upon completion of the sequence.
Honors Course: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2023, Fall 2022, Spring 2022
Supervised experience in application of geography in off-campus organizations. Regular individual meetings with faculty sponsor and written reports required.
Field Study in Geography: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Fall 2023

Directed Group Study: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 2024 First 6 Week Session, Summer 2024 Second 6 Week Session, Spring 2024

Supervised Independent Study: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022
The class has several goals. One is to give students a sound basis upon which to judge arguments. A second is to help students see, think, and write geographically--that is, to interpret the making and meaning of our physical and human landscapes. A third goal is to introduce students to the tremendous range of geographical inquiry and what is probably the major strength of geography as a form of thought: to wit, making links across space, among peoples, and between humans and the earth. The fall semester class also serves to introduce students to the practices and expectations of scholarly work more generally, including professionalization, publishing, and public speaking.
Contemporary Geographic Thought: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2023
'Geographical Difference/Differentiation' is a 5 unit course with Seminar and Workshop components. The Seminar reads canonical work in social theory against contemporary Geography, including metropolitan traditions of critique of capitalism, urbanization, space and time, discipline-biopower-sovereignty, and the now; Southern traditions of agrarian, subaltern and materialist postcolonial studies; Black radical and oceanic traditions that stretch Geography in new ways; and finally, geo-graphy as a form of Earth-writing concerned with the unraveling subject, ruined landscapes mixtures of form. The Workshop runs in parallel on particular weeks, focusing on geographic problematization and the research process.
Contemporary Geographic Thought 2 (Geographical Difference and Differentiation): Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2023, Spring 2022, Spring 2021
This course is meant as a Foundation in Geography theory. But this course is more
about geographic methods of dissolution or abolition than it is about constructing a
coherent, systematic body of work founded in a unified body of geographic thought
and/or tradition. We will read some texts that are often considered foundational but
we will read them with and through people who contested, undermined, and remade
them. We will engage with similar undoings of the work of both Geographers and
people who have been central to geographic thought.
Foundations in Geographic Thought: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2016, Fall 2011, Fall 2008
The relationship between societies and natural environments lies at the heart of geographical inquiry and has gained urgency as the rate and scale of human transformation of nature have grown, often outstripping our understanding of causes and effects. The physical side of environmental science has received most of the emphasis in university research, but the social basis of environmental change must be studied as well. Recent developments in social theory have much to offer environmental studies, while the latter has, in turn, exploded many formerly safe assumptions about how and what the social sciences and humanities ought to be preoccupied with. This seminar allows students to explore some classics in environmental thought as well as recent contributions that put the field on the forefront of social knowledge today.
Nature and Culture: Social Theory, Social Practice, and the Environment: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022
This graduate seminar explores the inextricable connection between blackness and geography.
Considering Katherine McKittrick’s claim that Black geographies are “‘the terrain of political
struggle itself’ or where the imperative of a perspective of struggle takes place,” we will situate
the spatial relations of blackness by placing Black people at the core of spatial production and
examine the mechanisms by which this takes place. In this course we ask: what are the
limitations and possibilities of traditional geographies? How does Black geographic thought
produce wider material and conceptual space for geographic knowledge? How does Geography
account for and understand blackness as condition, experience, and imaginary?
Black Geographies: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2023
In this seminar students will discuss research design, method, writing, and engage with one
another’s research and dissertation projects. Two-thirds of each class meeting will be
devoted to discussion of students’ work in progress. Each student will present their ongoing
projects 3-4 times throughout the semester and receive constructive feedback from the
seminar participants. One third of each class meeting is used for professional development
workshops on topics of analyzing fieldnotes, engaging literature, publishing journal articles,
gender and racial dynamics in academia, job talks and Job market, converting dissertation
into a book, using maps, tables, and numbers in presentation, and doing a social science with
something to say.
Research Seminar in Comparative Urban Studies: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2011, Spring 2010, Spring 2009
This course examines how concepts and theories of "development" have been produced, maintained, used, and challenged in different regions of the world economy. It will offer a framework for analyzing how changing and contending models of development both reflect and shape social processes and practices.
Development Theories and Practices: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2020, Spring 2019, Spring 2017
This seminar is designed for students intending to do research on topics of comparative development, the organization of work, and access to resources in different regions of the world economy. Participants in the seminar will be expected to write a research proposal and to participate actively in reading and responding to each other's work.
Seminar in Comparative and International Development: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2013, Spring 2009, Spring 2007
This seminar focuses on major works in political economy and social theory concerning capitalism, human action, and space-time. We grapple with what "value" means in "Capital", paying particular attention to issues of historical specificity, abstract labor time, and the "value theory of labor." We spatialize the argument by a close reading of David Harvey, and we look at attempts to understand capital's relation to human action and other forms of value, in anthropology and the work of Pierre Bourdieu. Finally, we take up the issue of scale in hope of formulating a coherent conceptual framework for integrating across scales, from the human-body (or even smaller scales) up to global, economic, cultural and ecological processes
Capital, Value, and Scale: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2018
This class will introduce the theory, background, and practice of (analog) gaming, and simulation, or, more generally speculative world-building. These activities are increasingly important in contemporary culture, and also in science, policy, business, planning, and government, in situations where understanding how the world works, how the world might work, or how things might work differently are important. In addition to approaching games as objects of study, students will design new games on topics of their choice, alone or in groups, as a practical component of this class.

Speculative World-Building: Games and Simulation: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2015
Simulation is now a widely adopted approach to science. This class will examine what simulation models are, and why and how they are used. Models that focus
on spatial processes (aggregation, segregation, diffusion, movement, growth) will be closely considered. A particular concern will be to explore how simulation
models may help elucidate the relationships between processes and the spatial outcomes they produce.

Spatial Simulation Modeling: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Prior to 2007
This course examines the economy as a domain of social analysis for understanding the black experience. Throughout the course we will examine what forms economic institutions and practices take across the black Diaspora. We will examine the central place of race within capitalist economies, largely overlooked by mainstream economic analyses and unpack its implications for equality in wider capitalist markets, state systems, and policy initiatives. Through historical and ethnographic accounts we will explore how people across the Diaspora cope with crises and inequality, both individually and collectively, and how historical narratives are brought to bear on those methods, and on notions of the future.
Economies of Race: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2024, Spring 2021, Spring 2020, Spring 2018
A review of the mechanics of glacial systems, including formation of ice masses, glacial flow mechanisms, subglacial hydrology, temperature and heat transport, global flow, and response of ice sheets and glaciers. We will use this knowledge to examine glaciers as geomorphologic agents and as participants in climate change.
Glaciology: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2016, Spring 2014, Spring 2013
Applying a complex-systems approach to environmental problems can yield valuable insight into risk, potential drivers of change, likely outcomes of perturbation, and whether it is even possible to forecast or manage system behavior. This course explores complex-systems theory and applications in geography, ecology, and earth science. Case studies include climate change, coupled human-environmental systems, vegetation community change, river networks, forest fires, earthquakes, and peatlands.
Complex Environmental Systems: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2008, Fall 2007
This graduate seminar will cover classic and modern research papers in trace gas biogeochemistry. Specific topics will vary by semester and may include: greenhouse gases, ozone-depleting gases, biosphere-atmosphere exchange, tropical forest biogeochemistry, Arctic biogeochemistry, peatland/wetland biogeochemistry, atmospheric impacts of croplands, volatile organic compounds, field and lab methods, the evolution of Earth’s atmosphere, and air-sea gas exchange. Class sessions will involve the presentation, analysis and discussion of research papers in biogeochemistry. In addition, students will have the opportunity to present their own research, contextualized in the broader field of atmospheric biogeochemistry.
Topics in Trace Gas Biogeochemistry: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2011, Fall 2009, Fall 2006
Numerous tectonic and Earth surface processes act in concert to produce the physical landscapes of our planet. This course examines three major regions of California (the Sierra Nevada, the Basin and Range, and the Southern Coast Ranges) as specific case studies for demonstrating how landscapes can be understood using concepts from tectonics, geomorphology, and geography. Two four-day field trips and preparatory readings for them will illuminate the integrated action of tectonics, geologic structure and lithology, drainage network development, hydraulics, soil production, hillslope transport, fluvial transport, aeolian transport, and glacial/perigicial processes. A term project will be required.
Geomorphology of California: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2023
Technology shapes how land is known, used, valued and imagined. This seminar responds to how 21st century digital innovations are changing real estate planning and development; the commodification and trade of land, housing, and property; and politics and practices of dwelling globally. We will develop theoretical perspectives on what the digital brings to property via case studies of cloud computing, urban housing, and agrarian and rural land.

Digital Transformations in Land, Housing, and Property: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2008
This graduate seminar teaches objective techniques for spatiotemporal data analysis focusing primarily on Empirical Orthogonal Function (EOF) analysis and its derivatives. The context will be climate data analysis, but the technique is readily translatable to other fields. The goal is to get the student sufficiently comfortable with the technique so they can use it in their research.
Spatiotemporal Data Analysis in the Climate Sciences: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2020, Fall 2014, Spring 2014, Fall 2013
Individual projects and group discussions concerning social constraints to, and effects of, natural resource planning and management. Application of sociological theories to problems of managing wildland ecosystems. Students will examine topics of individual interest related to the management of wildland uses. Enrollment limited.
Seminar in Sociology of Forest and Wildland Resources: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Fall 2020
Research seminar on selected topics in cultural geography.
Topics in Cultural Geography: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2021, Spring 2016, Spring 2015
Research seminar on selected topics in economic geography.
Topics in Economic Geography: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2014, Fall 2012, Spring 2012
Research seminar on selected topics in urban geography.
Topics in Urban Geography: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2016
Research seminar on selected topics in GIS.
Topics in GIS: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Spring 2021, Fall 2019
Research seminar on selected topics in political geography.
Topics in Political Geography: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2018, Fall 2017
Research seminar on selected topics in climatology.
Topics in Climatology: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2022, Spring 2015, Spring 2013
Research seminar on selected topics in biogeography.
Topics in Biogeography: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2017, Spring 2015
An introduction to advanced statistical methods for research. Topics include hypothesis testing, distribution fitting, ANOVA and MANOVA, PCA, cluster analysis, ordination, discriminant analysis, regression, time series analyses, causality, and data mining techniques. Students will complete assignments that use real datasets and will gain feedback in working with their own datasets.
Statistics and Multivariate Data Analysis for Research: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2020, Fall 2019, Fall 2018
All day Saturday. Each additional unit requires four hours of field work per week. Extended field project required.
Advanced Field Study in Geography: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2009
This course introduces graduate students to a range of applications of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) in geographical research, and theoretical considerations of the meaning, strengths, and limitations of the methods. We first review, in general, how geographic variables can be represented in a database. This leads to an extended discussion of the application of GIS methods to a variety of problems in physical and human geography, using topographic data, census data, and other sources, manipulated by widely used GIS software. Students build skills and understanding through work on example problems. Finally, the broad question of how GIS represents geographic variables, and the strengths and limitations of the technique, are re-visited using perspective gained from examples. Students will be expected to elaborate these issues in the context of their own research programs.
Geographic Information Systems: Applications in Geographical Research: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2021, Fall 2020
Questions asked about a changing planet are strongly influenced by data collected across a variety of spatial and temporal scales. Remote sensing of globally distributed ecosystems and human landscapes enables the exploration of questions not possible without the extension of those dimensions. This course will focus on developing scalable Earth system research questions using a variety of tools including advanced remote sensing methods, image acquisition including UAV systems, data synthesis and analytical approaches, literature review, progress reporting, and student presentations.
Topics in Earth System Remote Sensing: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2024
Invited lectures on current research and field work.
Geography Colloquium: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2024, Fall 2023, Spring 2023

Directed Dissertation Research: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 2023 10 Week Session, Summer 2023 3 Week Session, Summer 2023 Second 6 Week Session

Directed Dissertation Research: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2023, Fall 2019, Spring 2019

Directed Field Studies: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2023, Spring 2023, Fall 2022
Special tutorial or seminar on selected topics not covered by available courses or seminars.
Directed Study for Graduate Students: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2024, Fall 2023, Spring 2023
Individual research for graduate students in consultation with staff member.
Individual Research: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 2024 10 Week Session, Summer 2023 10 Week Session, Summer 2022 10 Week Session
Individual research for graduate students in consultation with staff member.
Individual Research: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2020, Spring 2019, Spring 2018

Professional Training: Teaching Practice: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2021, Spring 2020, Spring 2019, Spring 2015, Fall 2014, Spring 2014, Spring 2013
For graduate students interested in improving their ability to communicate their scientific knowledge by teaching ocean science in elementary schools or science centers/aquariums. The course will combine instruction in inquiry-based teaching methods and learning pedagogy with six weeks of supervised teaching experience in a local school classroom or the Lawrence Hall of Science with a partner. Thus, students will practice communicating scientific knowledge and receive mentoring on how to improve their presentations.
Communicating Ocean Science: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2009, Fall 2007
This course will introduce methods of organizing and delivering oral presentations, initating and organizing manuscripts, and utilizing digital communication methods, such as web-based media. Students will develop effective communication techniques through in-class experience. This class will have an emphasis on the sciences but will be useful and open to graduate students of all disciplines.
Effective Scientific Communication: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022
This course centers the work of teaching as a foundational aspect of our practice as geographers. Undoubtedly, the interdisciplinary nature of geography provides multiple avenues from where we can address some of our most pressing social, environmental, economic and political dilemmas. But how do we bring theory to practice? And how do we do this in a classroom setting? To answer these questions, this course offers pedagogical frameworks and practical skills for how theory and practice connect for both instructors and students. We will begin with a review of pedagogical literature and an analysis of how foundational scholars like Paulo Freire and bell hooks approach teaching as an act of community-making and empowerment.
Pedagogical Practices in Geography: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2023, Fall 2022, Fall 2021
Individual study for comprehensive or language requirements in consultation with the field adviser.
Individual Study for Master's Students: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 2009 10 Week Session
Individual study for comprehensive or language requirements in consultation with the field adviser.
Individual Study for Master's Students: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2023, Spring 2023, Fall 2022
Individual study in consultation with the major field adviser, intended to provide an opportunity for qualified students to prepare themselves for the various examinations required of candidates for the Ph.D.
Individual Study for Doctoral Students: Read More [+]