Big Ideas

AC Big Ideas Courses

About

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 any one disciplinary approach could produce....

Big Ideas Course Information for Faculty

About

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 any one disciplinary approach could produce....

The 2020 Election Big Ideas Course

About

The Fall 2020 semester presented a quadrennial opportunity to study American politics during a presidential campaign. “The 2020 Election” combined real-time analysis of the election, a lively roster of guest speakers from across the Berkeley campus and community, and an in-depth study of relevant historical and sociological trends that have shaped the contemporary moment. This class, hosted by Professor Michael Cohen (Department of African American Studies) and...

Prison Big Ideas Course

About

The Prison, later renamed to Prison Abolition Big Ideas Course, introduces students to the long history of the prison in the American experience, and does so by engaging ideas, movements, and practices to craft worlds of care and mutuality beyond the harms that the prison produces and legitimates. Students engage a range of literatures through which to reorganize the logics of an...

Fire Big Ideas Course

About

Fire is a part of the California landscape, and while many have come to dread fire season, this has not always been the case. “Fire: Past, Present and Future Interactions with the People and Ecosystems of California” (Anthropology C12AC / Environmental Science, Policy, and Management C22AC) presents a diachronic perspective on human-fire interactions with local ecosystems in California that spans over 10,000 years. The course provides a historical perspective on human-fire interactions at the landscape scale using a diverse range of data sources drawn from the fields of fire...

Big Ideas (Cross-Disciplinary)

About 'Prison Abolition'

Ethnic Studies 181AC / Gender and Women’s Studies 181AC / Social Welfare 185AC

Instructors: Keith Feldman, Eric Stanley, Ianna Hawkins Owen, Erin Michelle Turner Kerrison

Semester: Spring 2025

This course introduces students to the long history of the prison in the American experience, and does so by engaging ideas, movements, and practices to craft worlds of care and mutuality beyond the harms that the prison produces and legitimates. Students engage a range of literatures through which to...

'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—...