Syllabus

Professor

Robert Wyman, Professor of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology

Description

This survey course introduces students to the important and basic material on human fertility, population growth, the demographic transition and population policy. Topics include: the human and environmental dimensions of population pressure, demographic history, economic and cultural causes of demographic change, environmental carrying capacity and sustainability. Political, religious and ethical issues surrounding fertility are also addressed. The lectures and readings attempt to balance theoretical and demographic scale analyzes with studies of individual humans and communities. The perspective is global with both developed and developing countries included.

Texts

Birdsall, Nancy and Steven Sinding. Why Population Matters. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.

Boserup, Ester. Woman's Role in Economic Development. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1970.

Bumiller, Elizabeth. May You Be the Mother of a Hundred Sons: A Journey among the Women of India. New York: Ballantine Books, 1991.

Campbell, Neil A., Jane B. Reece and Lawrence G. Mitchell. Biology, 5th edition. Menlo Park, CA: Addison Wesley Longman, Inc., 1999.

Carlson, Elof. Mendel's Legacy: The Origin of Classical Genetics. Cold Spring Harbor: Cold Spring Laboratory Press, 2004.

Cohen, Joel E. How Many People Can the Earth Support. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1995.

Dash, Leon. When Children Want Children. New York: Penguin Books, 1990.

De Waal, Frans. Our Inner Ape. New York: Penguin Books, 2005.

De Waal, Frans. Chimpanzee Politics: Power and Sex among Apes. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989.

Faundes, Anibal and Jose Barzelatto. The Human Drama of Abortion: A Global Search for Consensus. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 2006.

Forsyth, Adrian. A Natural History of Sex. The Ecology and Evolution of Sexual Behavior. New York: Charles Scribner and Sons, 1986.

Gilbert, Scott. Developmental Biology, 7th edition. Sunderland, MA: Sinauer Associates Inc., 2003.

Gillis, John R., Louise A. Tilly and David Levine. Introduction to The European Experience of Declining Fertility 1850-1970: The Quiet Revolution. Cambridge: Blackwell Publishers, 1992.

Goodall, Jane. The Chimpanzees of Gombe: Patterns and Behavior. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986.

Harrison, Paul. The Third World: Population, Environment, and a Sustainable World. New York: Penguin Books, 1993.

Harrison, Paul. The Third Revolution: Environment, Population and a Sustainable World. London: I B Tauris & Co Ltd, 1992.

Hurtado, A. Magdalena and Kim Hill. Ache Life History: The Ecology and Demography of a Foraging People. Hawthorne: Aldine Books, 1996.

Keeley, Lawrence. War before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.

Kenney, Paul. Preparing for the Twenty-First Century. New York: Vintage Books, 1994.

Lidz, Theodore and Ruth W. Lidz. Oedipus in the Stone Age: A Psychoanalytic Study of Masculinization in Papua New Guinea. Madison: International Universities Press, 1989.

Livi-Bacci, Massimo. A Concise History of World Population: An Introduction to Population Processes. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2001.

Luker, Kristin. Dubious Conceptions: The Politics of Teenage Pregnancy. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996.

Luker, Kristin. Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1984.

Mohr, James C. Abortion in America: The Origins and Evolution of National Policy. New York: Oxford University Press, 1979.

Mosher, Steven. Mother's Ordeal: One Woman's Fight Against China's One-Child Policy. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1993.

Noonan, John T. The Morality of Abortion. An Almost Absolute Value in History. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970.

Peterson, Dale and Richard Wrangham. Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1996.

Rogers, Everett and D. Lawrence Kincaid. Communication Networks: Toward a New Paradigm for Research. London: Collier MacMillan Publishers, 1981.

Smith, Robert J. and Ella Wiswell. The Women of Suya Mura. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982.

Teitelbaum, Michael and Jay Winter. The Fear of Population Decline. Orlando: Academic Press, 1985.

Thompson, Sharon. Going All the Way; Teenage Girls' Tales of Sex, Romance, and Pregnancy. New York: Hill and Wang, 1995.

Tuchman, Barbara. A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century. New York: Knopf, 1978.

Weeks, John R. Population: An Introduction to Concepts and Issues, 8th edition. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 2002.

Ying, Hong. Daughter of the River. Translated by Harold Goldblatt. New York: Grove Press, 1998.

Requirements

There are two midterm examinations and a final. Each 75 minute midterm (25% of final grade each) will cover material on the preceding third of the course. The first half of the final exam (75 minutes) will cover the material from the last third of the course (25% of final grade). The second half of the final (also 75 minutes) will contain comprehensive questions (25% of final grade). Students have the option of submitting a paper of 10-20 pages (double spaced) in lieu of taking the second half of the final (25% of final grade).

Grading

Midterm examination 1: 25%
Midterm examination 2: 25%
Final examination: 50%

Sessions

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