Honors Seminar in Population Problems Course Description and Schedule UHON 300, Spring 2001 3:30-6:15 T, Old Main 215 Mr Lehmann Office Hours: 11:00-12:00 TTh, 2-3 Th East Hall 210, 677-5573 clehmann@charlie.usd.edu  http://www.usd.edu/~clehmann

Image by permission from 6 milliards d'Hommes / 6 billion Human Beings

This seminar introduces students to a variety of problems dealing with human population, including changes in its distribution and social and ethnic make-up and in fertility and death rates. They will learn to use the tools of demographic analysis.  And they will investigate the social, cultural, political, and natural causes of those changes. Finally, they will develop policy recommendations to address selected regional and international population problems.  The results of their investigations and their recommendations will appear on a Web site devoted to this seminar, and they will present their recommendations at a special session of IdeaFest.  As a course with international focus, it will feature no topic that addresses the United States exclusively, and as an interdisciplinary course, it will feature instruction led by an historian but contributed to by economists, anthropologists, biologists, and sociologists.

Textbook

Massimo Livi-Bacci, A Concise History of World Population, 2d ed (to be read for the first meeting)

Evaluation

The instructor will evaluate the students according the quality of their oral and written contributions to the seminar.  These include the following.

• Definition of a term or concept related to the study of population: at the second meeting (30 Jan) each student will present a 5-10 min discussion of his or her selected term.  Subsequently the students will post their discussions on the seminar's Web site.  10%
• Webwatch: during the first part of the course each student will report to the class on a Web site relating to world population issues.  Students will compose short descriptions of these sites for posting.  10%
• Demographic studies: in Part II the students will investigate a series of case studies, to be selected during Part I as students acquire expertise and develop interests in certain aspects of population.  The instructor and students together will assemble a reading list to prepare the entire class for each topic.  Two students will lead the discussion on each topic.  In some cases guests will lead the discussion  This section depends on class participation.  30%
• Committee Report: each small group will report its findings both orally at a special session of IdeaFest and in a multimedia format posted on the seminar's Web site.  50%
  Russia: Colleen Kelley, Tabitha Lurz, Kori Werner
  Brazil: Ben Aaker, Lindsey Tilberg
  Pakistan: Kennon Bauman, Justin Kopetsky, Chris Dabney
  Sierra Leone: Michael Harkness, Stacy Fuchs

Schedule

In Part I students will acquire basic information about the appropriate resources, tools, and concepts so that they can find and deal effectively with the data and problems they will encounter later. They will use a textbook, Massimo Livi_Bacci’s A Concise History of World Population.  A guest lecturer will introduce them to the basics of statistical analysis in the social sciences.  Other guests will address general issues of the effect on population of disease, climate change, economic development, etc.

In Part II students will study selected episodes of demographic change in various regions and times in order to investigate their causes and consequences (eg, changes or events in medicine, agriculture, and other technological areas; war, migration, public policy, class, gender, and other cultural, social, and institutional areas; and disease, climate and other natural areas). Students will in particular study the extent to which governments have developed policies to respond to these problems and to what degree these policies have had success.

Concurrently, students will work outside of class in small groups of about three students each. Each group will identify a particular region, investigate its current population issues, and develop recommendations for public policy. Here students will use the skills they have learned to assemble and analyze data produced by governmental, non-governmental, and UN surveys, to evaluate the interpretations of academics and governmental and non-governmental policy advocates, and to formulate realistic recommendations.

In Part III the students will present their recommendations in a formal setting at one of the sessions of IdeaFest.  Subsequently they will post their recommendations on the seminar's Web site.