Harvard University
DES 3356 – Field Methods and Living Collections
Course site
Syllabus (pdf)
Last offered: Fall 2017
Taught with Dr. Rosetta Elkin
Description
Confronting the reality of environmental degradation requires more than remote sensing, statistical analysis or institutional restructuring. As images of the changing planet become emblematic of our time, designers are responding with a scrutiny towards amplified scales and extreme events. This has given rise to a growing interest in the materials or elements of this transformation, and in the particular category of evidence that can only be collected through first hand engagement.
Getting to Know Darwin
Course Site (Harvard Only)
Syllabus (pdf)
Last Offered: Fall 2017
Description
This half-term, fall-term offering, freshman seminar incorporates reading selections from Darwin’s publications, as well as his private correspondence, and focuses close attention on the man behind the science as revealed by his writings. The goal is to introduce Darwin as an avid breeder of pigeons, lover of barnacles, devoted father and husband, gifted correspondent and tactician, and remarkable backyard scientist. Together, the class reproduces ten of Darwin’s classic Down House experiments and observations that were central to his case for natural selection and evolution. Learn more about Darwin’s experiments here.
*Note: Open to Freshmen only. Required field trips to the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University, the Museum of Comparative Zoology, and a local pigeon fancier will be included.
University of Colorado, Boulder
EBIO 4500: Plant Biodiversity and Evolution
Course Information & Syllabus (2010)
Description
The goal of this course is to understand plant diversity from an historical and phylogenetic perspective. Both neobotanical and paleobotanical data are brought to bear on the analysis of significant evolutionary events/processes in the history of photosynthetic life. Information from cell biology, morphology, life history theory, and development are all incorporated into the discussion of these most significant evolutionary events.
Concepts and information from lectures are applied to a hands-on set of laboratory sessions on plant diversity. Labs range from an examination of the diversity of cyanobacteria to the preparation and study of fossils from Carboniferous coal balls. The goal of every lab is to insure that students experience and interact with the actual data that are the basis for the interpretation of evolutionary history and diversification. Through a substantial and sustained investment of student lab fees, each student works with a state-of-the-art digital imaging station throughout the semester to record plant structure through the microscope.
Images created by EBIO 4500 students.
EBIO 4800/5800: Darwinian Revolution
Course information & Syllabus (2010)
Description
For over a century before the publication of the On the Origin of Species, naturalists, theologians, atheists, horticulturalists, medical practitioners, poets, and philosophers advanced evolutionary concepts for the diversification of life through descent with modification. The early intellectual history of evolutionism will be examined by reading and discussing the primary literature itself, as well as Darwin’s seminal work, On the Origin of Species.

EBIO 6000: Pre-Darwinian Evolutionism, a Graduate Seminar
Description
In 2001, I initiated an annual reading group / graduate seminar on the topic of pre-Darwinian evolutionism. The first year, Erasmus Darwin, the grandfather of Charles Darwin (and an early advocate of descent of all life from a common ancestor) was the focus of the group. In 2002, we met to discuss the life of Alfred Russel Wallace. In 2003, the evolutionary writings of Robert Chambers were carefully examined.
