Introduction to U.S. Environmental History

Catalog description

This course explores the major themes of U.S. Environmental History, examining changes in the American landscape, the development of ideas about nature in the United States, and the history of U.S. environmental activism. Throughout the course, we will be exploring definitions of nature, environment, and environmental history as we investigate the interactions between Americans and their physical worlds. HIST 109 provides an introduction to environmental history as a field of scholarship that examines changing relationships between human beings and the natural world. Environmental history centers on the examination of various questions about such relationships, including exploring how natural forces shape history, how humankind affects nature, and how those ecological changes then reciprocally influence human life. Major themes of the course include: (1) recognizing that American history has a natural context; (2) that relationships between nature and culture change over time; and (3) that knowledge about nature is socially constructed and historically contingent.