Arctic Studies Minor

Arctic Minor Courses – 2023-2024

The following courses are required courses for the Arctic Studies minor or fulfill elective requirements. This page will be updated as course offerings become available. For questions on courses, contact the Canadian Studies Center at canada@uw.edu.

FALL QUARTER 2023

ARCTIC 200: Indigenous Diplomacies and International Relations in the Arctic  **(3 cr.), M/W 11:30 a.m.-1:20 p.m., Jason Young, Senior Research Scientist, UW Information School

This course introduces students to international relations in the Arctic, with an emphasis on understanding IR from the perspective of the region’s Indigenous peoples. Students will study dramatic environmental, economic, and social transformations in the Arctic; learn about emerging geopolitical issues; explore Indigenous perspectives on international relations in the Arctic; and challenge themselves to understand international frameworks through the lens of Indigenous knowledge systems.

WINTER QUARTER 2024

ARCTIC 220/HSTCMP 220: At the Top of the World: Arctic Histories (5 cr.) Day/Time TBD, Elena Campbell, Associate Professor, Department of History

This course explores the history of human understanding of and relationship to the Arctic by tracing the social, economic, political, and environmental transformations of the Earth’s northernmost region, during the period from the earliest settlements to the end of the 20th century (the creation of the Arctic Council in 1996), as well as the shifts in ideas that accompany these changes.

This course will serve as a study of the way both Arctic communities and outsiders, Indigenous cultures and colonial cultures, have represented the Far North in their literatures. With an origin in the Scandinavian Arctic, students will study primary and secondary texts from a range of perspectives across the circumpolar North. Texts and films in the course will be drawn from Sámi, Norwegian, Inuit, and colonial North American traditions, including Sámi artists Nils-Aslak Valkeapää and Nils Gaup, Norwegian explorer and scientist Fridtjof Nansen, Grenlandic-Danish explorer Knud Rasmussen, Inuit artists Zacharias Kunuk, Zebedee Nungak, Tanya Tagaq, and others. The course will consider the various ways Arctic literatures engage issues like environmental health, colonialism, and cultural identity, resilience, and imagination.

SPRING QUARTER 2024

ARCTIC 401/ARCTIC 498: Current Issues in the Arctic (3 cr.), Day/Time TBD, 2024 UW Canada Fulbright Visiting Chair in Arctic Studies

JSIS B 103/SMEA 103: Society and the Oceans (5 cr.), Day/Time TBD, Brandon Ray

Explores the social, justice, and policy dimensions of the ocean environment and ocean management policy. Pays attention to how human values, institutions, culture, and history shape environmental issues and policy responses. Examines case studies and influential frameworks, such as the ocean as “tragedy of the commons.”

OCEAN 235: Arctic Change (2-5 credits), Day/Time TBD, Rebecca Woodgate, Senior Principal Oceanographer, UW Polar Science Center

This course investigates the Arctic system of ocean, ice, atmosphere, and sea-floor; how human interact with it, and what the future of the Arctic means to the world. Includes sea-ice loss, climate impacts, and Arctic resource exploitation.