The key course for the Graduate Certificate in Sustainable Communities is the Graduate Seminar in Sustainable Communities. This course will be offered each Spring semester, and will be offered on a rotating basis by the participating departments.
In this seminar, students will examine how the concept of sustainability has come to be shared by various actors with different agendas and interests, such as environmental organizations, international development governmental and non-governmental agencies, and corporations. This course analyzes the rise of the concept of sustainability and its multiple and conflicting definitions. It asks how knowledge of the environment is constructed and contested in environmental institutions and local communities around the world. It also asks the related question: what set of institutions and actors allowed the concept of sustainability to gain such wide currency at this time, and what this means for environmental interventions, as similar buzz words rise and fall in popularity in the future.
For Spring 2005, the course will be offered by Prof. Andrew Mathews, Department of Sociology/Anthropology.