Polycrisis: Investigating Our World Crisis of Ecology, Economics, Empire
ENVS 322
Fall 2025
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01
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Our world crisis of ecology, economics, and empire continues to interact and metastasize in surprising ways. It is shaking confidence in all of our established worldviews and in ruling elites everywhere. People are searching for big, urgent, powerful frames of analysis. This course will explore the interdisciplinary frame of polycrisis to characterize the newness, unprecedented scale, and pace of our planetary predicament. What is new and what is old about this polycrisis? Why is there no money for some things and plenty for others? Why is there a return of war? Why are people so angry? What should be done about the escalating ecological and climate crisis? And why, oh why is everyone talking about supply chains and industrial policy? In exploring these questions, we will pick up the lens of different academic disciplines, emphasizing their interconnections, with a focus on global political economy, namely the politics of who wins and who loses and how people and nations make justice. The four thematic units of this course will introduce students to: (1) Finance, analyzing distinct causes of recent financial crises and their unequal impacts on people and countries, spanning the 2008 global financial crisis, the 2010s eurozone crisis, the 2020s Covid Crisis, and the Global South debt crisis still unfolding today; (2) commodities (markets of energy, food, metals), trade, and the return of Industrial policy; (3) geopolitics, the return of war, (nuclear) arms races, the end of unipolarity, and the rise of multipolarity; and (4) the escalating climate and ecological crisis. Students will be expected to write a weekly blog post of 250-500 words responding to course material, and a final paper or collaborative media project. Grades will be based on in-class participation, assigned discussion leading, two written papers, or a final collaborative media project. |
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| Credit: 1 |
Gen Ed Area Dept:
SBS ENVS |
| Course Format: Discussion | Grading Mode: Graded |
| Level: UGRD |
Prerequisites: None |
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Fulfills a Requirement for: (Environmental Studies Minor)(Environmental Studies) |
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Past Enrollment Probability: Not Available |
| SECTION 01 |
| Instructor(s): Sahay,Tim Times: .M..... 07:10PM-10:00PM; Location: DWNY100; |
| Total Enrollment Limit: 16 | | SR major: 4 | JR major: 4 | | |
| Seats Available: 2 | GRAD: X | SR non-major: 3 | JR non-major: 3 | SO: 2 | FR: 0 |
| Drop/Add Enrollment Requests | | | | | |
| Total Submitted Requests: 0 | 1st Ranked: 0 | 2nd Ranked: 0 | 3rd Ranked: 0 | 4th Ranked: 0 | Unranked: 0 |
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