Week 1: How Rich Are We?
Maddison, Monitoring the World Economy (selections)
Baumol, Blackmun, and Wolff, Productivity and American Economic Growth (selections)
Nordhaus, "The Price of Light"
Week 2: Where Did We Come From?
Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel (selections)
Week 3: Why Eurasia? Why Europe?
Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel (selections)
Eisenstein, The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe (selections)
Week 4: Modern Science
Landes, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations (selections)
Galileo
Week 5: The Demographic Transition
Livi-Bacci, (selections)
Malthus
Week 6: The Invention of Invention
Landes, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations(selections)
Week 7: The Market Economy
Smith, The Wealth of Nations(selections)
Week 8: The First World Economy
????
Week 9: The Great Divergence
Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel (selections)
Landes, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations(selections)
Pritchett, "Divergence, Bigtime"
Week 10: Challenges to the Market Economy
Ericson, "The Classical Soviet-Style Economy"
Polanyi, The Great Transformation
Sen on famines...
Week 11: The Mixed Economy
DeLong and Eichengreen, "The Marshall Plan"
Week 12: The Neoliberal Bet
???
Week 13: The Return of Malthus?
???
Week 14: A New Economy?
College Courses
Beginning in spring 2000, the Divisional Deans are sponsoring
a series of College Courses designed to embody the mission of
the College of Letters and Science: these courses will foster
and support the ideals of a liberal arts education at the highest
level of excellence. They will be taught by the most outstanding
teachers on the faculty, for students who are eager to take an
intellectual risk, to explore a new area of interest at a deeper
level than is required or offered by the usual introductory course.
With the cooperation of the Senate, department chairs and faculty,
the Letters and Science Deans hope to create a body of courses
that will transform the intellectual lives of the students who
take them.
What is a College Course?
College Courses are designed to fulfill breadth requirements;
this means that your course might be the only science (or social
science, or humanities) course that a given student will take
while at Berkeley. We are committed to ensuring a level of quality
that can't be assured if a student merely chooses courses at random
from the breadth list. We are also committed to ensuring a certain
breadth of coverage; however, these are not survey courses in
the traditional sense. For example, a College Course might focus
on a given moment, or place, or discovery, and then move outward
from that focal point to present not only a full picture of the
historical (social, geographical, scientific . . .) backdrop,
but also a sense of the methodology of your discipline. Other
models are also appropriate. For example, a College Course could
focus a historical period through two or more disciplinary lenses.
Another course might contrast competing intellectual traditions,
or compare two different cultures. A College Course might map
existing and potential fields of knowledge, and explore the ways
in which different disciplines produce and test discoveries.
These courses will differ from courses you design for students majoring in your field in two ways. First, you can't assume an academic grounding in the discipline. College Courses don't have prerequisites, so you need to be able to convey whatever background knowledge they will need yourself. Second, the ideal College Course will entice and engage students who are primarily studying other disciplines. A College Course in the sciences, for instance, might address cultural influences on science or the effects of science on society, in tandem with the science material itself.
Why Teach a College Course?
* Funding will be made available to the faculty for course
development, technological assistance, and guest speakers, as
needed.
* The Deans will also provide replacement costs to the departments
in cases in which the College Course replaces a course the faculty
member would otherwise have taught.
* The student FTE credit will be allocated to your department-
a benefit for smaller departments in particular.
* An additional incentive, of particular relevance to underutilized
departments, is the publicity that the College Courses will attract:
the approval process will be highly selective and the Deans will
ensure that the courses are showcased.
* Departments of any size will welcome the support for their graduate
students: the Deans will provide funding for GSIs for these courses.
(We envision courses limited to 150-200 students, with discussion
sections.)
What's the Procedure for Creating a College Course?
If you have an idea for a College Course, please talk to your
Chair (to make sure it can be included in your teaching schedule
for the proposed semester), and then send a course proposal to
your Divisional Dean. The proposal need not be more than two-three
pages long. It should include a course description, an account
of the goals and intended audience for the course, and a syllabus.
If you have any questions about the College Course proposal process,
you may direct them either to your Divisional Dean or to Alix
Schwartz (642-8378, alix@uclink4), who is coordinating the program
for the Deans.
Your Dean will bring the proposal to the attention of the Divisional Deans as a group, and the six of them will make the final decisions. The Deans are recruiting for fall 2000 and spring 2001 in late October and the month of November. They will select the fall 2000 College Course offerings in late November.
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