Instructor: John Theobald, Department of Communication, College of Letters and Science
Description: The theme of the proposed FRS is oil depletion. Course material will include conflicting views and analysis of our current energy situation. It will be drawn from books, regularly updated websites, documentaries, and possibly guest presentations. A range of topics will be explored, including the nature and uses of oil, possible substitutes for it, and various scenarios about the effects of oil depletion on society. The curriculum also will include the University of California Oil Forum’s May meeting in which two prominent individuals on the issue will make presentations at an event in the ARC Ballroom. Participants in the proposed seminar will become acquainted with various perspectives on energy and will learn to analyze public debate and energy-related information. The primary goal of the seminar will be to enhance students' ability to apply their own observations of energy-related issues in both personal and global contexts.
Format: The first five meetings of the seminar will involve student discussion of various readings, video presentations, and concepts presented by the instructor. The last five meetings will be devoted to discussion of students' group and individual analyses leading toward course papers. In the first course meetings, all students will read a sample of views on energy from such authors as David Goodstein of Caltech and Vaclav Smil from the University of Manitoba. In the last course meetings, students will acquire materials unique to their own research and present them to the class for discussion. Students will attend a 2-hour seminar once per week for the 10-week duration of the course. In the first part of the course, described above, students will be expected to spend approximately 3 hours per week reading the assigned material and one hour per week developing a proposal for a course paper. By the later weeks of the seminar, it is expected that students, in regular consultation with the instructor, will spend their time writing a paper that analyzes some element of the peak oil issue. Grading: There will be two grade components to the course that will be equally weighted. They will include: 1) a participation grade that will be based on regular class contributions and, in particular, presentation of individual research work, and 2) a 4-5 page course paper as described above.
About the Instructor: John Theobald is Continuing Lecturer in the Department of Communication, where he has been on the faculty since 1991. He is the founder and chair of the University of California Oil Forum. His primary course offerings include The Media Industry, News Policies and Practices, Media Analysis, and Media Effects. These courses include many themes, among them: media ownership, social consequences of technology, globalization, media and global security, news bias, journalism practices, commercial effects of contemporary media, media and ecological systems, and a range of politically-related themes. Recent research interests include college orientation for high school students, ecological communication campaigns, and the selling of the tourism industry in the western United States. John has been a frequent commentator on media-related issues for print, radio, and television news agencies. He studied at UCLA, San Diego State University, and the University of Texas at Austin.