This course investigates the form and contexts of Russian prose, film, and documentary storytelling that challenges norms and seeks social change. Authors will include Tolstoy, Chekhov, Zoshchenko, Tokareva, and Ulitskaya among others. We will also work with Soviet and contemporary films, and ethnographic media, considering through these various forms why storytelling endures as a medium for transforming people and environments.
What new cultures of computing are needed for the Anthropocene? How can we re-design the invention, consumption, and use of computing amid climate change? What are responsible futures of computing in times of environmental upheaval? In this project studio course, we will draw on methods and theories from design, art, the humanities and social sciences to critically re-imagine computing in the Anthropocene.
In our time of climate change, this course brings together people and discourses from many disciplines in pursuit of more resilient social-ecological systems within our built environments through dialogue, interdisciplinary research, design, and action. The course provides introductions to design research methodologies, critical theories and practices of ecological science and thinking, and those of sustainability through readings and dialogue with distinguished researchers working in these areas.
Gentrification—the economic and cultural “revitalization” of American cities--has been, for better or worse, the defining feature of urban life in the twentyfirst century. As late as the 1990s, the “inner city” was often portrayed in journalism and popular culture as a decaying, crime-ridden ghetto; now it is often seen as a booming, culturally vibrant, economically desirable playground for hipsters and creatives—at least those who can afford it. How did this happen? Is it good or bad? Can gentrification go on forever?
The wealth of the United States is premised upon many things: hard work, inventiveness, an entrepreneurial spirit, and so on, but its first premise is land. Land that had been tended and kept by Native Americans. Land that was taken, stolen, or bought over the course of American expansion west. These lands offered new sources of biomass, fossil fuels, and even uranium to exploit. The American energy system benefited from these abundant fuels (in addition to the labor of enslaved Blacks).
This VIP takes as its main focus Georgia Tech’s new Living Building – the Kendeda Building for Innovative Sustainable Design – and its efforts to advance social equity as one of seven key performance areas in the Living Building Challenge. This VIP also explore equity and resilience in sustainability projects on Georgia Tech’s campus and in surrounding partner communities in Atlanta.
This course will utilize the materials collected in the Ivan Allen Digital Archive to explore the history of Atlanta in the 1960s through the lens of Mayor Ivan Allen, Jr.’s administration (1962-70).
This active learning course is designed to have students work on applied problems, including those associated with climate change and human health, by applying the fundamentals of biology. The course has historically engaged in partnerships with Atlanta biologists, most notably those at Atlanta Audubon to monitor the public health and ecological implications of bird strikes in Atlanta. Note: this lecture course has a co-requisite, previously affiliated service-learning lab.
