ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY

Catalog description

This course examines environmental history from a broad geographic (global) and temporal perspective (ancient times to the present). We will study how humans have interacted with, exploited, and preserved the environment, as well as how different religions and cultures formed their ideas about the environment and nature. This course also explores contemporary environmental issues and politics while using the past to contextualize and inform. Whether discussing environmental collapse on Easter Island in the Pacific Ocean, environmental politics in the United States today, or the process of global warming over the 20th and 21st centuries, students will be challenged to understand individual and collective behaviors in their social, cultural, political, and economic contexts.