Sophia Kalantzakos

How can changing our diets play a role in saving planet Earth? What does food production contribute to climate change? Did the Anthropocene begin with the industrial revolution, or is it part of the longer history of agricultural development? This course examines relationships among food, technology, and society, paying special attention to the impact of foodways on anthropogenic environmental change. Combining global perspectives from public policy, history, and environmental studies, the course explores the evolution and long-term security of food production, cooking technologies, and livelihood strategies in China, the UAE, Nepal, and the western United States. Units will address the history and evolution of food staples like soy, wheat, rice, corn, potatoes, and peanuts; the political economy of meat production; and the promise and perils of technocratic solutions to global food security, especially with regard to pesticides/fertilizers, industrialized farming, and energy use. Along with reading and discussion, students will grow, forage, and shop for food, cook and eat meals, and collaborate on the design and development of an NYU Abu Dhabi cookbook for the future.

There is no life without law. Nature has its laws. Religions have theirs, societies theirs, families theirs. Business has its rules and contracts. How do people understand the laws that are as much a part of life as the weather? Literature - the work of the imagination - guides our great journey towards understanding. Writers dramatize the relations among law, justice, and freedom. Writers also show the effect of law on the fates, fortunes, and feelings of people. The course explores the power of literature to show us what the law is, what it should not be, and what it might be.

This course introduces students to a wide variety of cultural perspectives on the ways that nature is conceived in its relation to human agency, social organization, and political behavior. As we become increasingly caught up in a new and ever-changing dynamic of climate change that is transforming cultures and societies globally, understanding our relation to nature becomes a pressing global challenge. How are we to confront the environmental changes caused by industrialization and continuing technological change? How have our views of nature and of ourselves been transformed by urbanization and technological change? Does the global character of production inevitably lead to the dilution of individual and local identities together with previous conceptions of nature? Constructed around a series of discrete problems that will be contextualized historically and culturally, the course strives for a unifying, global perspective on the environmental crisis and will address a range of today's most pressing eco-critical dilemmas.

Prerequisite: Must be an NYU Abu Dhabi student and have not completed the Core: Colloquium requirement.

By 2030, 60 percent of the world's population will live in cities. This mass urbanization presents unprecedented challenges for planners, policy makers, businesses, educators, citizens, migrants/refugees, and the environment. This course explores the multifaceted challenges the world's cities face. It asks how crisis and revitalization complement each other, especially in light of current population movements fueled by climate change and wars. A week-long trip to Athens offers a case study of a vibrant historical capital faced with unprecedented economic crisis, high unemployment, and large number of refugees from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and places far beyond. Readings from social science, social history, public policy, and literature, along with select films, will help students explore possibilities for refuge and resilience in this urban crisis. While visiting refugee camps, the Municipality of Athens, etc., students will assume different social roles and be paired with local business leaders, urban planners, policy makers, and members of refugee and migrant communities in order to deepen their practical experience of these complex issues.

The Paris Agreement entered into force on 4 November 2016. Its aim is to limit global warming to well below 2, preferably to 1.5 degrees Celsius, compared to pre-industrial levels. Implementation of the Paris Agreement requires economic and social transformation. The decarbonization of the global economy is, thus, no longer in question. As of 2019, major economies (the EU, China, Japan, South Korea and the United States) have all announced their goals to reach climate neutrality mid-century. Political will combined with the rapidly declining production costs for clean technologies such as renewables and the electrification of transport are pushing the transition forward. Ironically, the transition to a low carbon economy has led to the creation of new global race over critical minerals, such as rare earths, lithium and cobalt and this competition has already given rise to a series of fresh global political and economic realities, tensions, and disputes. In this course, we will examine how major industrial powers are decarbonizing their economies and deploying their new green industrial strategies; the nature of contemporary resource competition.

Can China strike a balance between economic development and environmental protection? This question, perhaps the most important question facing China (indeed the world) over the next few decades, pits economy and environment against one another. How did this adversarial relationship come about? Is it necessarily adversarial? Is it rooted in long-term trends in Chinese history, or in the most recent decades of double-digit economic growth? Are there solutions? Or are there better ways of asking the question? This course will look closely at the benefits, the consequences, and the costs of economic growth to society, ecology, and environment in China. The focus in on present dilemmas, examined through an historical perspective.

This course explores major works of Western political and social theory from the beginning of the modern era through the 1920s. Attention is paid to social and intellectual context, conceptual frameworks and methods, and contributions to contemporary social analysis. Theorists include Hobbes, Locke, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Smith, Mill, Marx, Du Bois, Weber, Durkheim, and Freud.

3 credits

The Himalayas: Geopolitics and Ecology of Melting Mountains: The Himalayas are home to 15,000 glaciers that provide a lifeline for more than 2.5 billion people. While these mountains span geographic boundaries across India, Nepal, China, Bhutan, and Pakistan, sovereign states have sought to territorialize the land, the water, the air, the ecosystems, and the people. The climate crisis has exacerbated regional tensions because as the Himalayas melt and their water sources diminish, a race to secure access to fresh water is quickly turning into competition. This course offers a fresh narrative frame for understanding the Himalayan water crisis. Glaciers, lakes, rivers, groundwater, and weather patterns constitute integral parts of the region’s intricate and holistic system of water generated, blocked, and moved through these mountains. The class will examine how the region’s complex water issues are not adequately captured by statist IR theorizations. It will emphasize the roles played by diverse local cultures, regional geopolitics, ecologies, and scientific analyses of earth systems to better understand what constitutes a lifeline for a third of humanity.

This course includes a regional academic seminar to Nepal. This course will be offered in January-Term 2025.

Public policy affects our lives in profound ways even when we are not aware of them. What we eat, how we recycle, or when we disclose personal information on the internet are all examples of choices largely determined by public policies. This course is an introduction to public policy, why it is important, and how it involves simultaneous ethical, political, and problem-solving processes. The course introduces students to the ways in which a variety of actors and institutions at the national and transnational levels interactively contribute to public policy. The course is divided into two parts. The first part provides an overview of the basic concepts underlying the public policy process and the second part provides critical perspectives on public policy-making in theory and practice.

This is an intermediate public policy class. Students will have the opportunity to build on skills introduced at the intro level: memo writing; drafting public policy press releases; preparation for long and short oral presentations; drafting talking points on policy issues, how to best frame policy challenges to explain proposed solutions and defend policy decisions. Students will also be asked to put together full dossiers on specific public policy issues to allow for policy makers to knowledgeably make effective decisions. The course will introduce students to wider theoretical frames and debates as well as crisis management. It will cover a wide range of global policy challenges revolving around issues such as strategic resources, energy, immigration, the climate crisis, health and security using current case studies. Students will explore the politics of policy-making and learn how to maneuver in a competitive policy environment as well as learning how to publicize policies through the maze of media outlets. Select speakers will share challenges and opportunities that they have encountered in the field based on the case studies that will be explored during the course.