FALL 2007 HONORS COURSES

HONR 239F: Plants and Empires: Historical Consequences and Contemporary Issues
Tuesday/Thursday 11 am - 12:15 pm
Dr. Todd J. Cooke, Department of Cell Biology and Molecular Genetics

Seldom are plants mentioned in the grand narratives of war, peace, or even everyday life; and yet plants have profoundly influenced the course of human history ever since the origins of agriculture. What features of certain cereal grasses facilitated their successful co-domestication with a rather inauspicious primate, namely prehistoric humans? How did the cultivation of sugar, tobacco, and cotton affect the colonization, settlement, and exploitation of the New World? What roles did tea, coffee, opium, rubber, and quinine play in the spread of the British Empire? How can we use our emerging appreciation of historical plant-human dynamics to arrive at a deeper understanding of contemporary issues such as genetic engineering, indigenous ceremonial plants vs. alien narcotics, illicit trade in rare orchids and other endangered species, global warming, and diminishing tropical rainforests?

In this course, we shall take an interdisciplinary approach involving botany, evolutionary biology, genetics, history, anthropology, and economics in order to present an integrated perspective on plants and humans interacting as co-evolving organisms through time. The course will be presented in a lecture-discussion format, with introductory classes covering fundamental biological principles and more specialized classes focusing on individual crops, historical events, and specific topics. Students are expected to do independent readings, participate in class discussions, make a PowerPoint presentation, and write several short essays evaluating controversial interpretations presented in the course.

Readings are likely to be excerpted from the following: The Origins of Agriculture: an International Perspective (Cowan, C. W., and Watson, P. J., editors. 2006); On the Origin of Species (Darwin, C. 1859); Tulipomania: the World’s Most Coveted Flower and the Extraordinary Passions it Aroused (Dash, M. 2001); One River: Explorations and Discoveries in the Amazon Rain Forest (Davis, W. 1996); Sex, Botany, and Empire: the Story of Carl Linnaeus and Joseph Banks (Fara, P. 2004); Biological Science, Second Edition; Orchid Fever: a Horticultural Tale of Love, Lust, and Lunacy (Hansen, E.. 2000); Plants and Society, fourth edition (Levetin, E. and McMahon, K. 2006); Gardens of Empire: Botanical Institutions of the Victorian British Empire (McCracken, D.P. 1997); and An Empire of Plants: People and Plants that Changed the World (Musgrave, T. and Musgrave, W. 2000).

CORE: Life Sciences, non-lab [LS]