Teaching

I teach several core classes, including Adaptation, The Social Science of Sustainability, and Human Ecology, in Environmental Behavioral Sciences and Earth Systems that are also popular among students in Change Leadership for Sustainability. I supplement these substantive classes with a variety of methodological courses including Population and Environment (new in Winter 2027) and Biological and Social Networks.

In addition to these departmental offerings, I teach a course for Sophomore College called The Uncertain Future of Humanity. With my colleagues Margaret Levi and Paula Moya, I taught a class on climate fiction (CliFi) called Imagining Adaptive Futures. Previously, I have taught Introductory Seminars such as The Most Rational People in the World, and a residence-based seminar called Community Leadership

I have collected here course descriptions as they appear in the Stanford Bulletin, some other contextual material where appropriate, syllabi, and some other assorted hand-outs.

For classes where students are expected to write term papers, I have assembled a style guide, which may be of interest. Also, based on my experience with the NSF Cultural Anthropology Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant Panel, I wrote some notes on writing an NSF proposal. These notes are primarily stylistic. Some day, I will write some more substantive notes based on the advice I give my students. I also have opinions about the kinds of courses that students should take.

In 2018-2019, I organized (along with Elspeth Ready and Ashley Hazel) a Workshop on Social Network Analysis for Anthropologists and the American Association of Physical Anthropologists annual meeting. Following a pandemic hiatus, I offered this workshop again in 2023 at the (renamed) American Association of Biological Anthropologists annual meeting and will continue to offer it sporadically depending on interest.

During the height of pandemic social distancing, I organized a weekly virtual seminar on life history theory. Notes and accompanying videos are available on the GitHub page, life history in ten papers.

From 2005-2015, I co-organized workshops on formal demography that drew mostly Ph.D. students from NICHD-supported population centers throughout the country. A selection of my somewhat ancient lecture notes are posted below. Other material, alas, seems to have been lost in the various reorganizations of the Stanford web servers.

EBS 123: The Social Science of Sustainability

Human behavior is central to the problems associated with climate change and sustainability. Climate change represents an urgent threat to the integrity of human systems and societies and the solutions to the problems associated with sustainability must be enacted via collective and individual decisions through social and political institutions. Avoiding the worst of the downsides of future climate scenarios requires that we find–and convince people to use–new energy sources; mobilize populations to adapt to the environmental and economic consequences; and mitigate further negative effects of climate change. This course will take a broadly interdisciplinary approach to social science in support of sustainability. Specific topics we will address include: the epistemology of social science, social ecology, human population, adaptation, trust, collective action, behavior change and cultural evolution, time preferences, and concept of slow violence.

EBS/Earthsys 183: Adaptation

Adaptation is the process by which organisms or societies become better suited to their environments. In this class, we will explore three distinct but related notions of adaptation.

SUSTAIN 131: Imagining Adaptive Societies

As we emerge from the first pandemic of the Anthropocene—with its attendant social and economic challenges in a world characterized by extreme economic inequality, the existential threat of climate change, increasing mistrust in fundamental social and political institutions, and the growing threat of authoritarianism—it is time for us to re-imagine how best to organize our communities, our institutions, and our societies.

Life History Theory in Ten Papers

Life history theory is the branch of evolutionary biology that attempts to understand patterns of investment in growth, reproduction, and survival across the life cycle. It is the theory that explains the major transitions that mark individual organisms'...

Demography Workshops

Shripad Tuljapurkar and I organized summer workshops way back in the day. I've collected some of my lecture notes here. They're old now, but mostly still relevant.

ESS 86N: The Most Rational People in the World

Humans, broadly construed, emerged as bipedal apes in the African mixed savanna-woodlands approximately two million years ago. From humble beginnings, humans have gone on to be become the ecologically dominant species in most biomes and grown to a global...

ESS 109/209: Biological and Social Networks

This course introduces the analysis of social and biological networks with a focus on field data collected by interdisciplinary environmental and health scientists.

Earthsys/Humbio 114: Global Change and Emerging Infectious Disease

This is a lecture course on the changing epidemiological environment, with particular attention to the ways in which anthropogenic environmental changes are altering the ecology of infectious disease transmission, thereby promoting their re-emergence as a...