And the obvious thing: a class which critically engages the notion of self-sufficiency

What does it mean to be self-sufficient?

Have people ever been self-sufficient?

Is self-sufficiency a goal worth striving for?

How do we become more self-sufficient?

What does self-sufficiency look like in modern America?

Can we be competent at everything?

What are the economic trade-offs associated with being a generalist vs. a specialist?

Is there a happy medium?

Reading List: 

Helen and Scott Nearing, "The Good Life"
Gene Logsdon, chapter on Amish from "Living at Nature's Pace"
Elizabeth Gilbert, "The Last American Man"
Thomas Thwaites, "The Toaster Project: Or a Heroic Attempt to Build a Simple Electric Appliance from Scratch"
William Coperthwaite, "A Handmade Life: In Search of Simplicity" (?)
Something about the biodynamic "whole farm organism"
Thoreau, "Walden"
Something about the Open-Source movement
Marcin Jakubowski's curriculum for K-Ph.D. education
Bland and Bell, 2007, "A Holon Approach to Agroecology"
An Indicator Framework for Assessing Agroecosystem Resilience
Jane Jacobs, "The Nature of Economies"
Thomas Jefferson's Agrarianism