The Duck of Minerva

Global Environmental Governance Syllabi – Open Thread

Academia • Environment & Energy

by Josh Busby

3 September 2016, 2300 EDT

As I blogged earlier today, climate change has not gotten sufficient attention from political scientists. Part of the problem is that few people teach graduate classes on the environment. I didn’t take one in graduate school and basically had to teach myself the topic. This past spring, I taught a full 15 week graduate class for MA students on global environmental governance, expanding a previous global health and environment class in to two separate classes.

There are potentially large start-up costs for someone who wants to teach a class in this space. So, I’m going to start an open thread and collect some syllabi, starting with mine.  If you know of good graduate or undergraduate syllabi on the global environment, post a link in the comments thread. I’ll edit this post periodically and feature them here.

My syllabus

Let’s hope that five years from now that there are more people teaching classes in this space, which I hope should generate some new interest in dissertation projects on the environment. Watch this space.

Joshua Busby is a Professor in the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas-Austin. From 2021-2023, he served as a Senior Advisor for Climate at the U.S. Department of Defense. His most recent book is States and Nature: The Effects of Climate Change on Security (Cambridge, 2023). He is also the author of Moral Movements and Foreign Policy (Cambridge, 2010) and the co-author, with Ethan Kapstein, of AIDS Drugs for All: Social Movements and Market Transformations (Cambridge, 2013). His main research interests include transnational advocacy and social movements, international security and climate change, global public health and HIV/ AIDS, energy and environmental policy, and U.S. foreign policy.

15 Comments

  11. Rowena
    Rowena on 8 September 2016 at 10.22 EDT

    I used to teach it, until adjuncting dried up in the area. Would kill to be teaching it now, or teaching at all. Unemployed academics are not a hot commodity on the job market at present.

  12. Jason Weidner
    Jason Weidner on 11 September 2016 at 20.02 EDT

    This is a very useful thread, thanks!

  13. Jason Weidner
    Jason Weidner on 11 September 2016 at 20.03 EDT

    I’m also teaching an undergraduate seminar on the Anthropocene. I’m wondering if anyone else has any experience with that aspect of global environmental politics.

  14. Bentley B. Allan
    Bentley B. Allan on 5 October 2016 at 22.18 EDT

    Here is a 400-level course I teach on global climate governance that covers the history, the institutions and the unfolding policy debate:
    bentleyallan.com/s/Allan_GCG_FA16.pdf
    And here is a 300-level course on global environmental politics more broadly:
    bentleyallan.com/s/Allan_GEP_SP16.pdf
    Both classes have lots of graduate-level material.