Explore Rome and rural Italy, a region where human beings have altered the environment for thousands of years and had to adjust to nature's volcanic and earthquake surprises. The ancient still lives side-by-side with the modern in Italy so it serves as a living laboratory of economic and environmental change.
This class will learn about economic opportunities and constraints in Rome and Italy as people changed from human-drawn carts to automobiles, from watch-towers to wireless phones, from city states to a nation state. It will study the historical and modern efforts of Italy to solve important economic and environmental issues such as traffic congestion, air pollution, water pollution, national park development and antiquities preservation.
Students will visit grape, olive, and orange farms committed to sustainable development and organic production and learn the economics of the modern "slow food" movement. Students will also have the opportunity to investigate the common property management of alpine resources in the Magnificent Community of Fiemme, in the Dolomite region of the Italian Alps.
Course Objective:
- To investigate the economic reasons for choices made by Greeks, Romans, and medieval Italians as they responded to scarcity and environmental change.
- To learn to practice "Economic Naturalism" while in Italy.
- To assess the role of markets in antiquity and medieval Italy.
- To appreciate the common property management of environmental resources in Italy.
- To analyze the changing role of institutions in supporting market exchange in Italy.
Course Credit:
- ECON 315: Investigating Environmental & Economic change in Italy. Fulfills S2 (GUR) or SO (GenEd), department credit.
