Heat in the City Urban Humanities Initiative Capstone Spring 2021 WHEN WHERE INSTRUCTOR OFFICE HOURS Thursdays from 10:45—12:15 PST https://ucla.zoom.us/j/93000205047 Dr. Bharat Jayram Venkat, bvenkat@ucla.edu Institute for Society and Genetics & Department of History By appointment, email professor to set up meeting WHAT IS THIS COURSE ABOUT? As the climate changes, the world’s cities in particular are getting hotter—what’s been described as the "urban heat island effect." Yet, not all cities, and not all parts of every city, are heating up equally. Heat overlays longer histories of inequality. In Los Angeles, for example, formerly redlined areas—the homes of communities of color who have been systematically and deliberately excluded from forms of private and public investment—continue to experience this history of racialized exclusion in the form of increasing temperatures. Thermal inequality, then, has become a new form of racial inequality. In this class, we will work collaboratively to develop humanistic and mixmethods approaches to studying heat in the city, in all of its messiness. We will use our research to develop new conceptual models for understanding heat as an experience and as a series of unevenly distributed effects. WHAT WILL YOU LEARN? 1. key concepts and ideas related to studying urban heat, such as thermal inequality, experience, comfort, pleasure, pollution, and justice 2. how to analyze climate change in relation to longer histories of socioeconomic and racial discrimination 2. how to track heat across scale, from the level of the body to the level of the city 3. how to think about heat across disciplines, and how to carefully and creatively borrow concepts, theories, and methodologies from various disciplines 4. how to develop a research question & implement a research project utilizing humanistic approaches to the city CONNECTION TO THE UCLA HEAT LAB Students in this capstone will participate obliquely in Dr. Venkat's Heat Lab, an interdisciplinary effort to study the experience of thermal inequality and begin to imagine what forms thermal justice might take. The UCLA Heat Lab is a new initiative which aims to bring together undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty with members of the community to study heat from a diversity of disciplinary perspectives, ranging from architecture and urban planning to biology, climate science, economics, geography, anthropology, and history. At present, we are particularly interested in • • • • how ordinary people actually experience heat as an embodied sensation that shapes their lives the relationship between heat, health, and the built environment how exposure to heat and its effects are unequally distributed (thermal inequality and justice) how we might map, represent, or otherwise visualize those exposures and effects WHAT SHOULD YOU KNOW? Your highest priority should be your well-being and the well-being of your loved ones. We’re living in difficult times, and students, staff, and faculty are encountering unprecedented levels of financial hardship, illness, death, housing insecurity, caregiving responsibilities, and so on. If you can’t make a meeting or can’t get your work done, do your best to let us know as soon as you can so we can make adjustments. This is a workshop-based course that meets formally once a week via Zoom. We will spend about half the time discussing the readings and the other half discussing your capstone projects. In addition to these meetings, you will be expected to complete assignments, readings, and work on your projects outside of class. Working collaboratively! One of our goals will be to learn to work with one another in various ways and at various stages of the research process. This might involve working together on a joint final project, sharing ideas, or asking for help with specific technical procedures. Outside of class, we will communicate via email and Slack. Slack is a communication platform that will allow you to discuss, collaborate, and get help with key concepts and readings, as well as work through technical issues. Our shared Slack workspace can be found here; be sure to join right away. Information about how to access and use Slack can be found here (see also additional Slack tips here). Communicate early and often. A shared Dropbox folder contains the readings for this course, as well as previous student projects and additional materials related to redlining, thermal inequality, mapping, and Los Angeles that will prove helpful in the development of your projects. Each week, you will be expected to post a series of reading response (at least 3, preferably more) via Slack prior to our meeting. Rather than a lengthy message, post many short messages throughout the week as you read, that raise a question about the text, ask for clarification, put texts into conversation, or consider how the text and its key ideas might help you think about your own project. Respond to others' messages so as to maintain a conversation. Everything is subject to change. As a research-based graduate-level capstone course organized virtually during a pandemic, we will undoubtedly face challenges and setbacks, as well as hopefully encounter new opportunities. Stay in touch with the professor and your fellow students, and be sure to read your emails and Slack message. You can set up an office hours appointment with me to further discuss any of the topics covered in the course, brainstorm, or address any difficulties. If you have any questions or concerns about your performance in the course, please set up office hours as early as possible—because the longer you wait, the more difficult it will be to get back on track. Please email me to find a mutuallyconvenient time to meet (virtually) via Zoom or Skype or telephone or whatever technological fix works best. UCLA DATA SCIENCE CENTER You are highly encouraged to attend Library Carpentry Workshops organized and hosted by the Data Science Center. These workshops are opportunities to increase the range of skills you bring to your projects, including for example R, Python, OpenRefine, Git/Github, SQL, and more. Students across all experience levels are encouraged to participate. You are also encouraged to attend the Data Science Center’s Tidy Tuesdays, “a safe and supportive forum for individuals to practice their wrangling and data visualization skills,” which is held every other Tuesday from 2-3:30pm via https://ucla.zoom.us/my/ucladatascience. Finally, you can schedule a virtual appointment with an expert at the Data Science Center to get one-on-one support to help you find, analyze, and visualize data. ACCESSIBILITY Please notify the professor if there are aspects of the instruction or design of this course that result in barriers to your learning or participation. If you require accommodations, please contact the Center for Accessible Education (CAE) at 310.825.1501. To ensure accommodations, students are encouraged to contact the CAE within the first two weeks of the quarter when possible. For more information visit the Center for Accessible Education’s webpage. ACADEMIC INTEGRITY UCLA’s policies on academic honesty and plagiarism can be found here. Students are prohibited from committing or attempting to commit any act that constitutes academic misconduct. By way of example, students should not give or receive (or attempt to give or receive) unauthorized help on assignments or examinations without express permission from the instructor. Students should properly acknowledge and document all sources of information (e.g. quotations, paraphrases, ideas) and use only the sources and resources authorized by the instructor. Students should not turn in assignments written by anyone GRADING Your grade will be based on your regular attendance and active participation in all aspects of the course. If you have any concerns about your grade at any point in the course, please contact the professor. Do not wait until the end of term to raise your concerns, as this leaves no time to make changes in the quality and level of your engagement. COURSE SCHEDULE Week 1 – April 1, 2021 Introduction of students, professor, and course Introduction to key ideas and concepts for studying heat Explanation of capstone process & project Week 2 – April 8, 2021 READ: Sam Bloch (2019). “Shade.” Places Journal. Bharat Jayram Venkat (2020). “Toward an Anthropology of Heat.” Anthropology News. Week 3 – April 15, 2021 READ: Crate, S (2011). “Climate & Culture: Anthropology in the Era of Contemporary Climate Change.” Annual Review of Anthropology 40: 175-94. Singer, M, J Hasemann, and A Raynor (2016). “‘I Feel Suffocated’: Understandings of Climate Change in an Inner City Heat Island.” Medical Anthropology 35(6): 453–63. Week 4 –April 22, 2021 READ: Eric Klinenberg (2002). Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago. Chicago: University of Chicago Press (selections). Week 5 – April 29, 2021 READ: Lisa Heschong (1979). Thermal Delight in Architecture. Cambridge: MIT Press. Week 6 – May 6, 2021 MIDTERM PRESENTATIONS (open to other UHI faculty & students) Each student will be asked to present the following: • Refined statement of research question & why it matters. • Draft of possible methodological approaches & how they might answer your question—options include: o thick mapping o visual art o spatial ethnography o digital storytelling o filmic sensing o podcast/sound narrative • Discussion of evidentiary sources/materials—these might include: o maps o blueprints o photographs o drawings o audio recordings o literature o video footage o newspapers o census data o scholarly literature o government documents o archival sources o oral histories o ethnographic fieldnotes • Outline of final research product---these might include: o storyboard o arcGIS storymap o podcast o ethnographic film o website • Evidence of historical, contemporary, and projective/speculative exploration Week 7 – May 13, 2021 READ: Freund, D (2012). American Sunshine: Diseases of Darkness & the Quest for Natural Light. Chicago: University of Chicago Press (selections). Week 8 – May 20, 2021 READ: Daniel Barber (2020). “The Shaded Modernism of the Global Interior: Climate and Risk in the Architecture of MMM Roberto, Rio de Janeiro, 1936-1955.” In Weather, Climate, and the Geographical Imagination: Placing Atmospheric Knowledges. Martin Mahony and Samuel Randalls, eds. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. Daniel Barber (2020). Modern Architecture and Climate: Design Before Air Conditioning. Princeton: Princeton University Press (selections). Michael Osman (2018). Modernism's Visible Hand: Architecture and Regulation in America. University of Minnesota Press (selections). Week 9 – May 27, 2021 READ: Cooper, G (2002). Air Conditioning America: Engineers and the Controlled Environment, 1900-1960. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press (selections). FINAL REVIEW – PRESENTATIONS Wednesday, June 2, 2021 from 6-9pm