North American Environmental History

Catalog description

Environmental history examines how human and non-human communities have lived in constant negotiation with each other. This course covers environmental changes in North America from deep geological time to the present with focus on the US South. Topics of study will include Indigenous peoples from the early Mississippian era to present day Southeastern Native Nations, impacts of settler colonialism and plantation economies, development of national parks and modern environmentalism, Black geographies and ecologies, resource extraction, and exploitation, labor movements, the emergence of the environmental justice movement, and the ongoing climate crisis.