- Wksp: Environmental History

Catalog description

Concern for human impact on the natural environment has been growing over the past two centuries. This workshop will place the modern environmental movement in a deep history context by asking how humans have interacted with their environment over the past fifty thousand years. Should we see people as a part of nature or not? How have we both altered the ecosystems we lived in and found sustainable ways of living? What have been the turning points in the story, and the contributions of fascinating game-changers like Henry David Thoreau, John James Audubon, John Muir, Teddy Roosevelt, and Rachel Carson? In the second half of the workshop we will shift from history to science as we examine the evidence for contemporary environmental threats and solutions. The workshop will involve a mix of lecture, discussion, small group presentations and film, and will be team taught by a member of the chemistry department.