University of British Columbia

This course explores the impacts of anthropogenic climate change. It builds on the fundamentals of ecology-- individuals, populations, species, communities, and ecosystems-- in order to examine shifts over the last forty years and expected changes in the coming decades.

This course examines and analyzes the creative and business aspects of producing professional projects for film and television. Students apply this analysis in the creation of two presentations and a production plan. The course follows a lecture-based format and students receive a mixture of instruction and hands-on training through lectures and assignments. Students complete three core assignments: a pitching presentation, a production plan, and a research presentation designed to provide students with an in-depth and practical understanding of creative and business producing for film and television.

This course is a survey of the Indigenous languages of the Americas. It offers a study of the basis of genetic classification and areal similarities. This course discusses and contrasts the structure of representative languages. Finally, it considers the present status of American Indian languages.

This course analyzes key examples of Buddhism from the nineteenth century to present day with special emphasis on its history and character in local settings, including specific traditions such as Tibetan Nyingma and Japanese Zen, as well as the development of a modern and global Buddhism. Two dichotomies frame the course's exploration of Buddhism: how representations of Buddhism in the modern era have been shaped by an increasing rate of flow of people, material, information, and money from one place to another within globalization; while also being shaped by the emergence of the modern nation-state and by the ideology of secularism. The course discusses topics including conflict with empiricism, scientific worldviews, and the global spread of biomedicine; Buddhist articulations of political ideologies, specifically critical and positive engagement with communism, capitalism, democracy, and nationalism; an analysis of modern religion using current methods in the interdisciplinary study of religion; and values and tensions in specific narratives about Buddhism as “traditional” or “modern.”

This course offers an introduction to the field of environmental ethics and the broader field of ethics. It considers moral problems arising in the context of human relationships to nature and to non-human living things in terms of both general moral theory and policy formation. The course discusses topics including moral standing, animal rights, obligations to future generations, pollution, hazardous materials, the depletion of natural resources, and the treatment of non-human living things. Different moral theories are discussed such as utilitarianism, deontology, and virtue theory; these theories are then applied to questions about our environment. Special consideration is given to First Nations perspectives.

This course examines planning for biodiversity conservation in the city and the tools needed to accomplish it. Topics include: how to design human-dominated landscapes to promote biodiversity; the benefits of pest control, pollination, healthy soils, water-use efficiency, and enjoyment of nature. Pre-requisite: FRST 200, BIOL 230, or an introductory course in ecology or conservation biology

Psychology is the scientific study of the mind and behavior. This course is an introduction to the cognitive and biological aspects of psychology. The course discusses topics including the formation of psychology as a discipline, an introduction to research methods and neuroscience, and an overview of some of the major fields in psychology such as perception, learning and memory, language, consciousness, and thinking. The course considers human psychology as well as the insights that can be gained from research in non-human species.