Big Ideas

AC Big Ideas Courses

The Big Ideas Courses, first launched in fall 2012, are dedicated to the premise that the most important issues and questions of our time—or any time—cannot be adequately addressed by scholars versed in one discipline alone. The co-teachers of each Big Ideas Course bring the different methodologies, underlying assumptions, and wisdom of their respective disciplines to bear on the course and its topic, and the resulting insights and discussions are richer and deeper than anyone disciplinary approach could produce....

AC Big Ideas Course: 'Prison'

The 'Big Ideas' courses introduces a new exciting format to the UC Berkeley classroom in which faculty and students from different disciplinary viewpoints are brought together around a pivotal concept. In the Spring of 2014, Patricia Hilden (Ethnic Studies) Jonathan Simon (Law) Jill Stoner (Architecture) and Victoria...

Big Ideas 2019 RFP

L&S Undergraduate Studies

Dear Colleagues,

I am writing today to invite you to join with colleagues to propose a Big Ideas Course. As you know, the campus offers hundreds of excellent courses. What sets Big Ideas Courses apart is that they take up key intellectual and societal challenges that cannot be adequately addressed...

'FIRE,' Anthropology C12AC/ESPM C22AC

FIRE: Past, Present and Future Interactions with the People and Ecosystems of California

Description:
Most Californians today fear catastrophic wild-land fires that each year scorch millions of acres of land, cost hundreds of millions of dollars to fight, and destroy human lives and property. Yet people have not always lived in dread of conflagrations. This class emphasizes how our interactions with wildfires in California have changed dramatically over the centuries, and that there is much that can be learned from earlier fire management strategies—...