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UC Berkeley Courses
AFRICAN AND AFRICAN AMERICAN STUDIES
African American Studies 116: Slavery and African American Life Before 1865
This course will examine the origins of the African slave trade, and explore political, economic, demographic and cultural factors shaping African American life and culture prior to 1865.
CHICANO STUDIES
Chicano Studies 162: The U.S. Role in Central America
A critical examination of the role played by the United States in Central America from the 19th century to the present. The focus will be on trends in U.S. policy, including an assessment of current policy alternatives in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and the impact of those policies on Latinos in the United States.
EDUCATION
Education 250D: Language and Identity
Relationship between language as social practice and the construction of individual and collective identity, and its significance in educational contexts. Topics covered include: language as embodied practice; language and subjectivity; pedagogy and symbolic control; language learning as mediated action and as the social symbolic construction of identity; writing and textual identity; authorship and voice; language learning memoirs as acts of identity; the politics of recognition; linguistic human rights.
ENERGY AND RESOURCES GROUP
Energy and Resources Group 275: Water and Development*
This class is an interdisciplinary graduate seminar for students of water policy in developing countries. It is not a seminar on theories and practices of development through the “lens” of water. Rather, it is a seminar motivated by the fact that over one-billion people in developing countries have no access to safe drinking water, three-billion don’t have sanitation facilities and many millions of small farmers do not have reliable water supplies to ensure a healthy crop. Readings and discussions will cover: the problems of water access and use in developing countries; the potential for technological, social, and economic solutions to these problems; the role of institutions in access to water and sanitation; and the pitfalls of and assumptions behind some of today’s popular “solutions.”
ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE, POLICY, AND MANAGEMENT
Environmental Science, Policy, and Management 165: International Rural Development Policy
Comparative analysis of policy systems governing natural resource development in the rural Third World. Emphasis on organization and function of agricultural and mineral development, with particular consideration of rural hunger, resource availability, technology, and patterns of international aid.
INTERDISCIPLINARY STUDIES
Interdisciplinary Studies 100E: The Globalization of Rights, Values, and Laws in the 21st Century
This interdisciplinary course is an introduction to the complex interplay of transnational values, international rights and legal institutions that increasingly govern social, cultural and geopolitical interactions in our contemporary world. Theoretical and methodological tools from the social sciences, jurisprudence, and philosophy will be applied in the analyses of these interplays. A study of rights and norms presupposes not only an understanding of the empirical evolution of rights traditions (including constitutional traditions) in a variety of global regions, but also an understanding of the theories of rights and laws that support such traditions as they are embedded in them (just war theories, peace theories, etc.). The study of rights and norms also requires an exploration of the transformations of crucial international norms and rights due to the formation of supranational institutions and organizations in the 20th century (UN, UNESCO, GO’s, etc.). The course will provide the students with an opportunity to place emerging transnational rights institutions into a historical and geopolitical framework.
LAW, SCHOOL OF
Advanced Comparative Law Seminar
This seminar is designed to acquaint the student with the basic institutions and policies in legal systems adhering to continental European legal traditions (so-called civil law countries), with emphasis on judicial organization, the scope of judicial power, and the protection of civil and human rights.
Capital Punishment and the Constitution
The course offers an overview of the constitutional law governing the death penalty. After an initial look at the history of capital punishment and the arguments for and against the death penalty, the course will consider the following topics: early challenges to the death penalty; different statutory attempts to enact constitutional death penalty schemes; execution of offenders who commit non-homicide crimes and who are felony murder accomplices, juveniles, mentally retarded, insane or possibly innocent; jury selection in capital cases; the effect of race on capital sentencing; the roles of the defendant, defense counsel, the prosecutor, and the trial judge; the procedural requisites and evidentiary limits for capital sentencing trials; penalty trial instructions and arguments; state and federal post-conviction review of capital sentences; clemency proceedings and execution; and international standards regarding capital punishment. The course is designed both for students generally wishing to learn more about the death penalty and students considering the practice of criminal law. Although only criminal law is required for the course, knowledge of criminal procedure would be helpful.
The casebook is Rivkind & Shatz, Cases and Materials on the Death Penalty (West Publishing 2001). The course offers guest speakers, video documentaries, an optional visit to a capital trial or an appellate argument in a death penalty case, and, if possible, an optional tour of San Quentin State Prison, which houses California’s death row for men.
International Development Law and Policy
This course explores legal issues, institutions and strategies pertaining to international development, examining efforts to strengthen foreign legal systems through such devices as improved judicial administration, alternative dispute resolution and legal aid. Emphasis is placed on substantive legal issues pertaining to human rights, the status of women, the environment and economic reform. The seminar focuses substantially, though not exclusively, on Asia.
International Environmental Law
This seminar examines the role of law in the management of the international environment. Consideration is given to international environmental treaties; the role of the international Court of Justice in identifying and establishing international environmental law; international regulation of private conduct that affects the environment; and the effects of international trade, financial institutions, human rights and armed conflict on the environment.
International Human Rights
This course provides an introduction to human rights law, policy and institutions and the use of these mechanisms for protecting and promoting human rights. In addition to the focus on core human rights issues, the course will analyze cutting edge legal developments in human rights and the environment, globalization, and corporate responsibility. Students will gain an understanding of the legal norms and procedures in the human rights field, and the activities of nongovernmental organizations in the United Nations system. Students will have the unique opportunity to develop their research for presentation to the U.N. Human Rights Commission.
International Human Rights: Law, Policy, and Process
The seminar introduces the law and institutional mechanisms for the international protection of human rights, emphasizing international treaty and nontreaty mechanisms for protecting and promoting human rights, including regional systems and the role of nongovernmental organizations. The use of international rights standards in the United States is also addressed.
Refugee Law
This course examines the root causes of refugee flight and the existing international norms that address human rights abuses and civil strife. Using both an international and a domestic law perspective, students examine the responsibility of nations to accept refugees. The course includes an in-depth examination of refugee law doctrine in the United States, with particular focus on the assessment of individual claims for asylum status.
LEGAL STUDIES
Legal Studies 154: International Human Rights
International human rights are at the forefront of national and international dialogue. These discussions reflect the evolution of human rights from declaratory statements to rights enforceable in courts. Using historic documents, timely current articles, and a new international human rights document being drafted at Berkeley, we will learn about the recognition of human rights, existing institutions to protect human rights, and look forward to the future of human rights.
PEACE AND CONFLICT STUDIES
Peace and Conflict Studies 10: Introduction to Peace and Conflict Studies
This course introduces students to a broad range of issues, concepts, and approaches integral to the study of peace and conflict. Subject areas include: the war system and war prevention, conflict resolution and nonviolence, human rights and social justice, development and environmental sustainability.
Peace and Conflict Studies 126: International Human Rights
This course provides an overview to the historical, theoretical, political, and legal underpinnings that have shaped and continue to shape the development of human rights. Students are introduced to substantive topics within human rights and provided an opportunity to develop critical thinking, oral presentation, and writing skills. We discuss where the concept of human rights originates, how these ideas have been memorialized in international declarations and treaties, how they develop over time, and how they are enforced and monitored. We examine a variety of issues and encourage students to think differently—to analyze world and community events through a human rights framework utilizing some of the necessary tools to investigate, research, and think critically about human rights and the roles that we may assume within this arena. The course requires two six-page papers, participation in a team debate, and an independent reading assignment.
Peace and Conflict Studies 127: Human Rights and Global Politics
After World War II, we witnessed a “revolution” in human rights theory, practice, and institution building. The implications of viewing individuals as equal and endowed with certain rights is potentially far reaching as in the declaration that individuals hold many of those rights irrespective of the views of their government. Yet, we also live in a world of sovereign states with sovereign state’s rights. We see everyday a clash between the rights of the individual and lack of duty to fulfill those rights when an individual’s home state is unwilling or unable to do so. After introducing the idea of human rights, its historic development and various international human rights mechanisms, this course will ask what post-World War II conceptions of human rights mean for a number of specific issues including humanitarian intervention, international criminal justice, U.S. foreign policy, immigration, and economic rights. Looking in-depth at these five areas, we will ask how ideas about human rights, laws about human rights, and institutions to protect human rights have on how states and other global actors act, and how individuals have fared.
Peace and Conflict Studies 128AC: Human Rights and American Cultures
The course analyzes the theory and practice of human rights for three groupings in the United States and examines questions of race and ethnicity as they are embedded in various international human rights instruments. The course utilizes an interdisciplinary approach to the study of developing systems, laws, and norms for the promotion and protection of human rights while considering each group’s underlying political, literary, and cultural traditions.
POLITICAL SCIENCE
Political Science 111AC: The Politics of Displacement
Antebellum American political history generally follows a routine script in which the purpose of the Revolution was to liberate Americans for self-government and economic and social development. Slavery is viewed as an anomaly still needing explanation, and Native American relocation as the consequence of natural forces of immigration and premodern social values. In this class, the revolution against traditional political authority embodied in Jefferson’s and Thomas Paine’s attack on the British crown, the rise of slavery, and the conflict with Native America are seen as coherent parts of a cultural and social development that emerges in the 18th- and 19th-century America. Using both original antebellum materials, including biographies, history, and literature, and contemporary images from American popular culture such as film, news and magazine articles, and music, we will compare and contrast the experiences of antebellum Native Americans, European immigrants, and African slaves as a connection between the past and the present emerges.
Political Science 124A: War!
The nature and causes of war; the relationship of politics to war in history; historical varieties of strategic doctrine; the implementing of strategy; the endings of war.
Political Science 124C: Ethics and Justice in International Affairs
Should nations intervene in other countries to prevent human rights abuses or famine? On what principles should immigration be based? Should wealthy states aid poorer states, and if so, how much? Who should pay for global environmental damage? Answers to these moral questions depend to a great degree on who we believe we have an obligation to: Ourselves? Nationals of our country? Residents of our country? Everyone in the world equally? We will examine different traditions of moral thought including skeptics, communitarians, cosmopolitans, and use these traditions as tools to make reasoned judgments about difficult moral problems in world politics.
Political Science 127A: International Law
This course is an introduction to public international law for students of international relations. The primary purpose of this course is to enhance students’ understanding of the ways in which international law orders international politics. How and to what extent has it been used in resolving conflicts between nations? How and to what extent has it facilitated the achievement of common goals? What is the relationship between international law and states’ foreign policies? Emphasis throughout the course is on the substantive rules of the law, the relationship between law and politics, and on historical episodes that illustrate the issues. Substantive areas include international human rights, international trade law, and international law and the use of force.
PUBLIC HEALTH
Public Health 107: Violence, Social Justice, and Public Health
This course addresses violence as a public health issue, using an interdisciplinary public health approach to enable undergraduate students to explore and analyze violence from personal, social, community, and political perspectives. Beginning with individual experiences of violence and its impact, the course will go on to focus on gender-and race-based violence, firearms, poverty, youth, and collective violence; students will learn to apply public health strategies to identify causes of violence and develop practical community-based plans to prevent violence and promote safety.
Public Health 211: Health and Human Rights*
The course examines the origins of health and human rights concerns and outlines a conceptual basis for human rights among health professionals. It provides an overview of the epidemiology of human rights violations worldwide and an analysis of the psychology of abuse. The course considers the role of health professionals in: (1) documenting the health and social consequences of human rights violations and war; (2) treating survivors of abuse; (3) addressing specific human rights concerns of women and children; (4) identifying the impact of health policy on human rights; and (5) participating in human rights education and advocacy. The course will also examine issues of universality of human rights and cultural relativism and the role of accountability for the past abuses in prevention.
SOCIAL WELFARE
Social Welfare C129: Children Through History: Social Practices and Social Welfare
This course brings together the methods of historical analysis and the problems faced by social welfare professionals to create a new and provocative examination of children and childhood in America. Topics covered will include childbirth and infancy, children’s rights, learning, and the state of the superparent. A significant research paper is required.
* Graduate course
African American Studies 116: Slavery and African American Life Before 1865
This course will examine the origins of the African slave trade, and explore political, economic, demographic and cultural factors shaping African American life and culture prior to 1865.
CHICANO STUDIES
Chicano Studies 162: The U.S. Role in Central America
A critical examination of the role played by the United States in Central America from the 19th century to the present. The focus will be on trends in U.S. policy, including an assessment of current policy alternatives in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and the impact of those policies on Latinos in the United States.
EDUCATION
Education 250D: Language and Identity
Relationship between language as social practice and the construction of individual and collective identity, and its significance in educational contexts. Topics covered include: language as embodied practice; language and subjectivity; pedagogy and symbolic control; language learning as mediated action and as the social symbolic construction of identity; writing and textual identity; authorship and voice; language learning memoirs as acts of identity; the politics of recognition; linguistic human rights.
ENERGY AND RESOURCES GROUP
Energy and Resources Group 275: Water and Development*
This class is an interdisciplinary graduate seminar for students of water policy in developing countries. It is not a seminar on theories and practices of development through the “lens” of water. Rather, it is a seminar motivated by the fact that over one-billion people in developing countries have no access to safe drinking water, three-billion don’t have sanitation facilities and many millions of small farmers do not have reliable water supplies to ensure a healthy crop. Readings and discussions will cover: the problems of water access and use in developing countries; the potential for technological, social, and economic solutions to these problems; the role of institutions in access to water and sanitation; and the pitfalls of and assumptions behind some of today’s popular “solutions.”
ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE, POLICY, AND MANAGEMENT
Environmental Science, Policy, and Management 165: International Rural Development Policy
Comparative analysis of policy systems governing natural resource development in the rural Third World. Emphasis on organization and function of agricultural and mineral development, with particular consideration of rural hunger, resource availability, technology, and patterns of international aid.
INTERDISCIPLINARY STUDIES
Interdisciplinary Studies 100E: The Globalization of Rights, Values, and Laws in the 21st Century
This interdisciplinary course is an introduction to the complex interplay of transnational values, international rights and legal institutions that increasingly govern social, cultural and geopolitical interactions in our contemporary world. Theoretical and methodological tools from the social sciences, jurisprudence, and philosophy will be applied in the analyses of these interplays. A study of rights and norms presupposes not only an understanding of the empirical evolution of rights traditions (including constitutional traditions) in a variety of global regions, but also an understanding of the theories of rights and laws that support such traditions as they are embedded in them (just war theories, peace theories, etc.). The study of rights and norms also requires an exploration of the transformations of crucial international norms and rights due to the formation of supranational institutions and organizations in the 20th century (UN, UNESCO, GO’s, etc.). The course will provide the students with an opportunity to place emerging transnational rights institutions into a historical and geopolitical framework.
LAW, SCHOOL OF
Advanced Comparative Law Seminar
This seminar is designed to acquaint the student with the basic institutions and policies in legal systems adhering to continental European legal traditions (so-called civil law countries), with emphasis on judicial organization, the scope of judicial power, and the protection of civil and human rights.
Capital Punishment and the Constitution
The course offers an overview of the constitutional law governing the death penalty. After an initial look at the history of capital punishment and the arguments for and against the death penalty, the course will consider the following topics: early challenges to the death penalty; different statutory attempts to enact constitutional death penalty schemes; execution of offenders who commit non-homicide crimes and who are felony murder accomplices, juveniles, mentally retarded, insane or possibly innocent; jury selection in capital cases; the effect of race on capital sentencing; the roles of the defendant, defense counsel, the prosecutor, and the trial judge; the procedural requisites and evidentiary limits for capital sentencing trials; penalty trial instructions and arguments; state and federal post-conviction review of capital sentences; clemency proceedings and execution; and international standards regarding capital punishment. The course is designed both for students generally wishing to learn more about the death penalty and students considering the practice of criminal law. Although only criminal law is required for the course, knowledge of criminal procedure would be helpful.
The casebook is Rivkind & Shatz, Cases and Materials on the Death Penalty (West Publishing 2001). The course offers guest speakers, video documentaries, an optional visit to a capital trial or an appellate argument in a death penalty case, and, if possible, an optional tour of San Quentin State Prison, which houses California’s death row for men.
International Development Law and Policy
This course explores legal issues, institutions and strategies pertaining to international development, examining efforts to strengthen foreign legal systems through such devices as improved judicial administration, alternative dispute resolution and legal aid. Emphasis is placed on substantive legal issues pertaining to human rights, the status of women, the environment and economic reform. The seminar focuses substantially, though not exclusively, on Asia.
International Environmental Law
This seminar examines the role of law in the management of the international environment. Consideration is given to international environmental treaties; the role of the international Court of Justice in identifying and establishing international environmental law; international regulation of private conduct that affects the environment; and the effects of international trade, financial institutions, human rights and armed conflict on the environment.
International Human Rights
This course provides an introduction to human rights law, policy and institutions and the use of these mechanisms for protecting and promoting human rights. In addition to the focus on core human rights issues, the course will analyze cutting edge legal developments in human rights and the environment, globalization, and corporate responsibility. Students will gain an understanding of the legal norms and procedures in the human rights field, and the activities of nongovernmental organizations in the United Nations system. Students will have the unique opportunity to develop their research for presentation to the U.N. Human Rights Commission.
International Human Rights: Law, Policy, and Process
The seminar introduces the law and institutional mechanisms for the international protection of human rights, emphasizing international treaty and nontreaty mechanisms for protecting and promoting human rights, including regional systems and the role of nongovernmental organizations. The use of international rights standards in the United States is also addressed.
Refugee Law
This course examines the root causes of refugee flight and the existing international norms that address human rights abuses and civil strife. Using both an international and a domestic law perspective, students examine the responsibility of nations to accept refugees. The course includes an in-depth examination of refugee law doctrine in the United States, with particular focus on the assessment of individual claims for asylum status.
LEGAL STUDIES
Legal Studies 154: International Human Rights
International human rights are at the forefront of national and international dialogue. These discussions reflect the evolution of human rights from declaratory statements to rights enforceable in courts. Using historic documents, timely current articles, and a new international human rights document being drafted at Berkeley, we will learn about the recognition of human rights, existing institutions to protect human rights, and look forward to the future of human rights.
PEACE AND CONFLICT STUDIES
Peace and Conflict Studies 10: Introduction to Peace and Conflict Studies
This course introduces students to a broad range of issues, concepts, and approaches integral to the study of peace and conflict. Subject areas include: the war system and war prevention, conflict resolution and nonviolence, human rights and social justice, development and environmental sustainability.
Peace and Conflict Studies 126: International Human Rights
This course provides an overview to the historical, theoretical, political, and legal underpinnings that have shaped and continue to shape the development of human rights. Students are introduced to substantive topics within human rights and provided an opportunity to develop critical thinking, oral presentation, and writing skills. We discuss where the concept of human rights originates, how these ideas have been memorialized in international declarations and treaties, how they develop over time, and how they are enforced and monitored. We examine a variety of issues and encourage students to think differently—to analyze world and community events through a human rights framework utilizing some of the necessary tools to investigate, research, and think critically about human rights and the roles that we may assume within this arena. The course requires two six-page papers, participation in a team debate, and an independent reading assignment.
Peace and Conflict Studies 127: Human Rights and Global Politics
After World War II, we witnessed a “revolution” in human rights theory, practice, and institution building. The implications of viewing individuals as equal and endowed with certain rights is potentially far reaching as in the declaration that individuals hold many of those rights irrespective of the views of their government. Yet, we also live in a world of sovereign states with sovereign state’s rights. We see everyday a clash between the rights of the individual and lack of duty to fulfill those rights when an individual’s home state is unwilling or unable to do so. After introducing the idea of human rights, its historic development and various international human rights mechanisms, this course will ask what post-World War II conceptions of human rights mean for a number of specific issues including humanitarian intervention, international criminal justice, U.S. foreign policy, immigration, and economic rights. Looking in-depth at these five areas, we will ask how ideas about human rights, laws about human rights, and institutions to protect human rights have on how states and other global actors act, and how individuals have fared.
Peace and Conflict Studies 128AC: Human Rights and American Cultures
The course analyzes the theory and practice of human rights for three groupings in the United States and examines questions of race and ethnicity as they are embedded in various international human rights instruments. The course utilizes an interdisciplinary approach to the study of developing systems, laws, and norms for the promotion and protection of human rights while considering each group’s underlying political, literary, and cultural traditions.
POLITICAL SCIENCE
Political Science 111AC: The Politics of Displacement
Antebellum American political history generally follows a routine script in which the purpose of the Revolution was to liberate Americans for self-government and economic and social development. Slavery is viewed as an anomaly still needing explanation, and Native American relocation as the consequence of natural forces of immigration and premodern social values. In this class, the revolution against traditional political authority embodied in Jefferson’s and Thomas Paine’s attack on the British crown, the rise of slavery, and the conflict with Native America are seen as coherent parts of a cultural and social development that emerges in the 18th- and 19th-century America. Using both original antebellum materials, including biographies, history, and literature, and contemporary images from American popular culture such as film, news and magazine articles, and music, we will compare and contrast the experiences of antebellum Native Americans, European immigrants, and African slaves as a connection between the past and the present emerges.
Political Science 124A: War!
The nature and causes of war; the relationship of politics to war in history; historical varieties of strategic doctrine; the implementing of strategy; the endings of war.
Political Science 124C: Ethics and Justice in International Affairs
Should nations intervene in other countries to prevent human rights abuses or famine? On what principles should immigration be based? Should wealthy states aid poorer states, and if so, how much? Who should pay for global environmental damage? Answers to these moral questions depend to a great degree on who we believe we have an obligation to: Ourselves? Nationals of our country? Residents of our country? Everyone in the world equally? We will examine different traditions of moral thought including skeptics, communitarians, cosmopolitans, and use these traditions as tools to make reasoned judgments about difficult moral problems in world politics.
Political Science 127A: International Law
This course is an introduction to public international law for students of international relations. The primary purpose of this course is to enhance students’ understanding of the ways in which international law orders international politics. How and to what extent has it been used in resolving conflicts between nations? How and to what extent has it facilitated the achievement of common goals? What is the relationship between international law and states’ foreign policies? Emphasis throughout the course is on the substantive rules of the law, the relationship between law and politics, and on historical episodes that illustrate the issues. Substantive areas include international human rights, international trade law, and international law and the use of force.
PUBLIC HEALTH
Public Health 107: Violence, Social Justice, and Public Health
This course addresses violence as a public health issue, using an interdisciplinary public health approach to enable undergraduate students to explore and analyze violence from personal, social, community, and political perspectives. Beginning with individual experiences of violence and its impact, the course will go on to focus on gender-and race-based violence, firearms, poverty, youth, and collective violence; students will learn to apply public health strategies to identify causes of violence and develop practical community-based plans to prevent violence and promote safety.
Public Health 211: Health and Human Rights*
The course examines the origins of health and human rights concerns and outlines a conceptual basis for human rights among health professionals. It provides an overview of the epidemiology of human rights violations worldwide and an analysis of the psychology of abuse. The course considers the role of health professionals in: (1) documenting the health and social consequences of human rights violations and war; (2) treating survivors of abuse; (3) addressing specific human rights concerns of women and children; (4) identifying the impact of health policy on human rights; and (5) participating in human rights education and advocacy. The course will also examine issues of universality of human rights and cultural relativism and the role of accountability for the past abuses in prevention.
SOCIAL WELFARE
Social Welfare C129: Children Through History: Social Practices and Social Welfare
This course brings together the methods of historical analysis and the problems faced by social welfare professionals to create a new and provocative examination of children and childhood in America. Topics covered will include childbirth and infancy, children’s rights, learning, and the state of the superparent. A significant research paper is required.
* Graduate course