HIST 385KEnvironmental Hist of the ME

Catalog

This course offers a survey of the Environmental History of the Middle East, the region encompassing Western Asia, North Africa, and Southeastern Europe, and its global entanglements from approximately 900 AD to the present. We will look critically at this new and dynamic field of study and explore how modern historiography has approached the relationship between peoples in the Middle East and their environments. Students will explore how societies in this region have used and thought about nature and how, in turn, how their lives were shaped by the environments they helped create. Central themes will include the mobility of peoples, plants, and animals; deserts, forests, and marine ecologies; agriculture and food history; urban landscapes and ecologies; disasters and pandemics; fossil fuels, environmentalism, and conservation; climate change; environment and gender; and the impact of colonialism, nationalism, and capitalism on the environments across the region. We will attend to primary sources as well as major works of literature (novels, poetry) and films related to the environmental history of the region, approaching such works as both sources of historical evidence and potential challenges to conventional narratives.