This course explores the US intellectual property regime’s impact on the production, distribution and consumption of media and art. We will consider intellectual property’s seminal role in the formation of emerging media landscapes including cinema, television, social media, and new streaming platforms. We will also develop an understanding of how the structural commitments of the law — copyright, trademark, and patents — contribute to racial hierarchy, economic inequality, and environmental injustice. Topics include intellectual property’s ability to manage Civil Rights discourse on film, television, and the web; examining how copyright has historically deprived Black artists of control over their works; the role of the “author” in the age of artificial intelligence; and the racial disparities of intellectual property on global ecological crises. By the end of the class, students will come away with historical, theoretical, and practical understandings of how media technology changes the law and how the law has subsequently responded to changes in media technology. This course is affiliated with CWIC (Communication Within the Curriculum).

When we think of environmental policies in the USA, we may think of one or more laws geared to improve our nation's air, water, ecosystems, and biodiversity. However, environmental policies and policy-making comprise more than just specific laws and regulations. Making and implementing environmental policy is a process influenced by multiple political, cultural, and economic factors in addition to scientific factors, all of which impact the ability of policies to be effective, that is, to actually improve the environment. In this course, we develop a framework to analyze the effectiveness of the social actors, process and outcomes of environmental policy-making. We ask questions such as: How do policy makers define environmental problems and solutions? Who are the social actors involved in the process? How are policies created and negotiated? What underlying assumptions and realities about the roles of government and society shape policy instruments and design? Are science and risk accurate or distorted? How are social and environmental justice intertwined? To answer these complex questions, we contextualize and critically analyze policies to determine how both government and society impact on regulatory approaches. We study the institutions involved and examine social and ecological outcomes of environmental policies. We also discuss contemporary issues and policy situations that arise throughout the course of the semester, and comment on them in a class blog. Finally, students will select an environmental issue and formulate a policy proposal to recommend to decisionmakers.

The course focuses on devices that convert thermal, solar, or chemical energy directly to electricity, i.e., without intermediate mechanical machinery such as a turbine or a reciprocating piston engine. A variety of converters with sizes ranging from macro to nano scale will be discussed, with the advantages offered by nanoscale components specifically highlighted. Topics will include thermoelectric energy converters and radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs), thermionic energy converters (TEC), photovoltaic (PV) and thermophotovoltaic (TPV) cells, as well as piezoelectric harvesters. Additional topics may include magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) generators, alkali metal thermal-to-electric converters (AMTEC), and fuel cells.

Settler colonialism in the Americas is both material and ideological, rooted in dispossessions that are traceable to historical conquest, yet marked in the present. To rectify dispossession is to look both backwards and forwards, to repair material losses and to attend to the values and ideologies that hybridize our present. This course delves into case histories of Indigenous, Latinx, Afro-descendant, and other marginalized populations who have been dispossessed of territory, natural resources, freedom, political rights, and cultural heritage. Our primary goals are the following: first, we seek to document specific territorial, embodied, and heritage dispossessions through the mechanisms of deceit, disease, and warfare (both broadly and specifically); second, we aspire to outline and identify models and processes that promote recovery and restorative justice. Faculty from several departments and programs (anthropology, history, Latin American studies, Native American studies, gender studies, etc.) will present guest lectures highlighting their critical studies of archaeological, museological, artistic, and other processes of dispossession and recovery. Their case studies include: counter-mapping techniques for identifying Indigenous lands; mapping the movements of bodies and objects among museums; tracking trends in heritage loss and recovery; etc. Students will learn about useful resources and initiatives for decolonizing, and will gain experience in understanding dispossessions of the past, while applying restorative methodologies in the present.

Creating meaningful solutions to the biggest challenges facing humanity today requires diverse interventions at all scales: macro, micro, and everything in between. The projects reshaping business as usual and driving more sustainable outcomes involve both multinational cooperation at the highest levels and place-specific interventions at the scale of individuals, families, and communities. This course will explore innovative, cross-scale initiatives through which Central America’s largest and fastest growing economy is tackling sustainability challenges while balancing cultural values and conservation of biodiversity with economic growth and exploitation of natural resources. On the international stage, the Republic of Panama leads the way on environmental conservation, even surpassing ambitious global targets by protecting more than 50 percent of its oceans and becoming one of the first certified carbon-negative countries. The globalization-defining Panama Canal epitomizes human efforts to make something happen that was colossal in scale and macro in scope. Today’s Panama also offers opportunities to study bright spots, positive deviance, and the emergence of new economic initiatives based on diverse worldviews—despite the micro scale of some of these projects, they too have the potential to change world order. Geographically, politically, culturally, and economically, Panama is an excellent place to prototype. Underdeveloped relative to its potential, the nation provides a fruitful environment for Panamanian and expatriate entrepreneurs alike to develop new ventures, organize from the ground up, and intentionally design for sustainable scalability.

At the core of this experiential travel course is the opportunity to visit a range of Panama’s land, sea, and cityscapes and interact with pioneering companies, entrepreneurs, policymakers, NGOs, and scientists. Organizational Dynamics students will be challenged to create and contribute while learning in this dynamic environment. Travel abroad will take place in Panama over Penn’s Spring Break (March 1-10, 2024), with pre-departure and post-trip sessions TBD. Students are expected to complete readings in advance of the trip, keep a field journal, participate in scheduled meetings and activities, complete a paper or applied project synthesizing their learning, and give a presentation on their work during the final session.

This course covers Earth System dynamics from the viewpoint of deep time. Specifically, the course focuses on (i) the history of our planet and its life, (ii) the physical, chemical and biological feedbacks driving evolution and (iii) the evidence that has given us access into the understanding of the Geologic Time Scale.

Origin of Earth, continents, and life. Continental movements, changing climates, and evolving life.

Patterns on the Earth's surface arise due to the transport of sediment by water and wind, with energy that is supplied by climate and tectonic deformation of the solid Earth. This course presents a treatment of the processes of erosion and deposition that shape landscapes. Emphasis will be placed on using simple physical principles as a tool for (a) understanding landscape patterns including drainage networks, river channels and deltas, desert dunes, and submarine channels, (b) reconstructing past environmental conditions using the sedimentary record, and (c) the management of rivers and landscapes under present and future climate scenarios. The course will conclude with a critical assessment of landscape evolution on other planets, including Mars.

An introduction to processes and forces that form the surface and the interior of the Earth. Topics include, changes in climate, the history of life, as well as earth resources and their uses.

Directed student research of selected topics in environmental building design. These topics will be further explored in ARCH 708: Bioclimatic Design Studio and will provide the basis for the research documents developed with each student's design project. Course work will include lectures, discussions, weekly readings, and in-class exercises. Each student will be required to make a presentation and submit a research report.

In this course, we will interrogate the term “remediation” as meaning both environmental restoration and media representation. Students will be introduced to the fields of ecocriticism and ecomedia by examining how a variety of materials—from bestselling books to billboards, documentaries, and websites—have informed the cultural imagination of the environment. Students will also discover how media communications and publications can help to remediate the environment in the face of climate catastrophe. This course can be counted as an elective toward the Environmental Humanities minor and as fulfilling the minor's public engagement component. See the English Department's website at www.english.upenn.edu for a description of the current offerings.

This course explores the place of Latin American cultural production in the environmental humanities. Latin American literature has a long and complicated relationship with the natural world, at times imagining it at the core of national and regional identity and at times figuring it as a dangerous wasteland to be “civilized.” We will focus on texts that grapple with this heritage but attempt to carve out a different approach, texts which contest the logic of development by examining its costs and foregrounding interconnections between human and non-human life. Reading literary and visual texts alongside the work of activists and ecocritical scholars, we will examine the connections between environmentalist arguments and critiques of coloniality, capitalism, and patriarchy. We will ask both what unique advantages literature and art have when it comes to imagining alternatives to systems based on extractivism and domination and what inherent limitations Western art forms face when it comes to representing non-human perspectives or communicating knowledge of the natural world rooted in Amerindian or African Diasporic cultures.

“Nature is perhaps the most complex word in the language,” says Raymond Williams in his influential book Keywords. This course explores the many meanings of “nature” as well as the assumptions, anxieties, and aspirations attached to such terms as “environment,” “ecology,” “conservation,” “resource,” “climate,” and “sustainability.” This is not a course in environmental literature per se, but rather an exploration of how language and literature engages with and shapes our relations to and our understandings of the natural world. We will consider both the ways literature--especially the poetry and fiction of the nineteenth century--contributes to present ecology-breaking worldviews, as well as how reading and writing differently is a necessary part of the struggle to refigure our relationship to the natural world.

Architecture is an inherently exploitive act - we take resources from the earthand produce waste and pollution when we construct and operate buildings. As global citizens, we have an ethical responsibility to minimize these negative impacts. As creative professionals, however, we have a unique ability to go farther than simply being "less bad." We are learning to design in ways that can help heal the damage and regenerate our environment. This course explores these evolving approaches to design - from neo-indigenous to eco-tech to LEED to biomimicry to living buildings. Taught by a practicing architect with many years of experience designing green buildings, the course also features guest lecturers from complementary fields - landscape architects, hydrologists, recycling contractors and materials specialists. Coursework includes in-class discussion, short essays and longer research projects.

This critical-creative seminar explores the rise of New Wave science fiction to explore the interrelations between gender, colonialism, language and ecology. Students will also have an opportunity to write their own ecological speculative fiction.

This course will examine the ecological nature of design at a range of scales, from the most intimate aspects of product design to the largest infrastructures, from the use of water in bathroom to the flow of traffic on the highway. It is a first principle of ecological design that everything is connected, and that activities at one scale can have quite different effects at other scales, so the immediate goal of the course will be to identify useful and characteristic modes of analyzing the systematic, ecological nature of design work, from the concept of the ecological footprint to market share. The course will also draw on the history of and philosophy of technology to understand the particular intensity of contemporary society, which is now charachterized by the powerful concept of the complex, self-regulating system. The system has become both the dominant mode of explanation and the first principle of design and organization. The course will also draw on the history and philosophy of technology to understand the particular intensity of contemporary society, which is now characterized by the powerful concept of the complex, self-regulating system. The system has become both the dominant mode of explanation and the first principle of design and organization.

The study of living organisms in their natural environment, spanning the ecological physiology of individuals, the structure of populations, and interactions among species, including the organization of communities and ecosystem function.

Fuel cells, electrolysis cells, and batteries are all electrochemical devices for the interconversion between chemical and electrical energy. These devices have inherently high efficiencies and are playing increasingly important roles in both large and small scale electrical power generation, transportation (e.g. hybrid and electric vehicles), and energy storage (e.g. production of H2 via electrolysis). This course will cover the basic electrochemistry and materials science that is needed in order to understand the operation of these devices, their principles of operation, and how they are used in modern applications

After introducing electrochemical concepts (redox reactions, electrolytic versus galvanic cells, standard oxidation potentials), this course will cover the broad impact of electrochemical phenomena on materials. Topics that will be discussed include: (1) Materials extraction from their ores to finished products by electrowinning, (2) Chemical refining (Mond process) and electrorefining of materials, (3) Materials degradation by destructive electrochemical corrosion, (4) Three-dimensional nanostructured materials by selective electrochemical corrosion, (5) Enhancing the electrochemical performance of materials via nanostructuring - e.g. lithium-ion battery electrodes; (6) Enhancing the electrochemical performance of materials via surface chemistry - e.g. oxygen evolution electrocatalysts; (7) Light-enhanced electrochemical performance of materials - e.g. solar water splitting photoelectrocatalysts. Students will be engaged in interactive classroom activities.

Principles and mathematical models of electrochemical processes in energy conversion and storage, water desalination, nanofabrication, electroplating, and sensing for engineering and science graduate students and advanced undergraduates, lacking prior background in electrochemistry. The course covers equivalent circuits, electrode kinetics, electrokinetic and transport phenomena, and electrostatics. The course will introduce and use the finite element program COMSOLTM. We will discuss, among other things, applications to stationary and flow batteries, supercapacitors, integrated electric circuit fabrication, electrokinetics, and biosensing. In contrast to CBE 545 Electrochemical Energy Conversion that focuses on solid state electrochemistry, this course emphasizes liquid-based electrochemistry.