University of Puget Sound
ER-T2-8: Themed Semester or Year

First-year students at Puget Sound may elect to take part in residential seminars during their freshman year, typically one of which is sustainability-themed. This year's offerings included a course called "Ecotopia? Landscape and Identity in the Pacific Northwest." The syllabus for this residential seminar includes the following overview: "In his novel Ecotopia, Ernest Callenbach envisioned Northern California, Oregon, and Washington separating from the USA to become a break-away “green” republic. Using this imagined place as a kind of base camp, we will explore the multifaceted relationship between landscape and human identity in the region. We will ask: How have different peoples encountered, experienced, and represented the environment in the Pacific Northwest? How has the environment, or at least their understandings of it, shaped their sense of who they are or want to become?" Last year the sustainability-related offering in our residential seminars was called "Peasants, Commodity Markets, and Starbucks: The Economics of Coffee" which included Fair Trade and sustainable coffee initiatives, as well as covered environmental externalities in coffee production.