I developed this course as an introduction to the key concepts in global environmental history. I've done a raft of new reading in preparation and I'm also working on building rubrics and guides to help lead my students through interdisciplinary readings. I'll be posting more of these as the semester runs on and I'll reflect on its successes and failures as I muddle through.
Environment and History
Jared Taber, Ph.D. jstaber@ku.edu
EVRN 103/HIST 103: University of Kansas
Fall 2016
Goals
- This class teaches historical thinking as a method for understanding environmental change.
- We will explore people’s different, sometimes conflicting, perspectives on human nature and how these perspectives shape their understanding of history.
- When you leave this class, you will be able to pose thoughtful, effective, and answerable questions about how history has shaped and continues to shape academic scholarship and everyday life.
Structure
This course will cover key periods in the global history of environmental change in four units structured around historical processes that loom large in environmental studies:
- We will situate the human experience in ‘big history’ a method stressing continuities joining history with earth science and biology.
- We will look at the legacies of Ancient civilizations and medieval communities as they shaped, and continue to shape, the landscape and our relationship with the natural world.
- We will study the origins and environmental consequences of the waves of urbanization, empire building, and industrialization in the last five hundred years.
- Finally, we will ask how revolutions in the use of resources such as coal, nitrates, industrial chemicals and nuclear power have reshaped the natural world.
Credit
Three Essay Drafts: 40%
Your term paper will explore why there is such a deep disagreement about the origins and consequences of the Anthropocene epoch—a proposed period in the geological timeline where human activity has become the most influential force in changing the Earth. You do not need to have prior familiarity with the Anthropocene. We will read a number of essays discussing the processes that can define the Anthropocene and its historical, social, and ecological implications. Your paper will provide critical descriptions of the relationships between these essays and explore their implications for the interpretation of environmental history.
The definition of the Anthropocene is itself a subject of ongoing scholarly debate, and I will judge your essays based upon how you explain and engage with the significance of that debate.
Your drafts will be completed and assessed for revisions according to the following schedule.
- A 900-1100 word initial draft will be due in discussion section during week three.
- You will share your paper with the class in a blackboard discussion list, and participate in peer editing and conversation about your findings during discussion in week four.
- A 2000-2200 word second draft will be posted to blackboard and turned in during discussion section on week seven.
- This version will incorporate new readings and situate your draft relative to those written by your colleagues.
- You should ask yourself why you came to a different conclusion or emphasized different evidence from your colleagues.
- This will also be posted to blackboard and peer edited in section during week eight.
- A 3000-3500 word final draft will be due in discussion section on week twelve.
- During the last week of class we will develop a collaborative map laying out the different answers to the question of when the Anthropocene began.
I will grade these essays first for their overall quality and second for their improvement. Part of your grade on any draft will also depend on the strength of your feedback in the peer editing and critical responses to your fellow students.
Attendance/Contributions to learning: 30%
Discussions and in-class activities will contribute to the tools that you rely upon in writing your essay drafts and final presentations. Come to class prepared to listen, discuss and participate in the learning process. You are allowed three unexplained and unexcused absences. If you miss more than three classes you will lose three participation points per absence. If you are unable to attend for documentable reasons, come talk to me as soon as possible.
Two reviews of the use of history in global environmental discourse: 5% each
This course focuses on history as a force shaping our knowledge of and relationship with the environment. You will produce two 300-word reviews of how past environments are depicted in published work. These reports should cover issues stretching beyond the United States, but they need not be academic works. They can include everything from the depictions of Medieval winter in Game of Thrones to Mel Brooks’ depiction of the stone age in “The History of the World Part I.” They can also include serious works such as the IPCC reports on climate change or scientific articles from peer-reviewed journals. You cannot use the materials covered in this class, but anything else is fair game.
Final Presentations: 20%
In lieu of a final exam, you will collaborate with your classmates to develop an oral presentation reviewing the key findings from one section of the course. During your colleague’s’ presentations you will complete a rubric that reviews and critiques their presentations.
Readings
Week 1: Introduction, how do people use history in environmental studies?
No assigned readings
- 8/22 Monday: Introduction: history in environmental studies
- 8/24 Wednesday: Primary Sources, Secondary Sources, and Criticism
- 8/26 Friday: No Discussions
Week 2: Deep time! How do we define it? What does it have to do with history?
Read “Welcome to the Anthropocene” and follow worksheet to get through Crutzen, Steffens, McNeill “The Anthropocene.” and Ruddiman “The Anthropogenic Greenhouse Era.” We will go over Crutzen and Ruddiman in class on Friday.
- 8/29 Monday: Big history and regimes. Overview of journal articles
- 8/31 Wednesday: What is a geological epoch?
- 9/2 Friday: How to read scientific journals.
Week 3: What is human nature? How can we assess the assumptions that our sources take for granted?
Read Hariri, Sapiens and Zuk, Paleofantasy.
- 9/5 Monday: What is human nature?
- 9/7 Wednesday: Why do we think we’re maladapted to the modern world?
- 9/9 Friday: Hierarchy, horizontality, aggression, and human nature.
Week 4: Peopling the World
Read Gillis, Human Shore Ch. 1; Certini “Anthopogenic Soils are Golden Spikes for the Anthropocene” (use worksheet)
- 9/12 Monday: Migrations in Eurasia/Africa
- 9/14 Wednesday: Peopling the Americas
- 9/16 Friday: Peer Editing
Week 5: Ancient Civilizations
Read Gillis, The Human Shore Ch. 2, selections from Frontinus, Edgeworth, “Diachronous Anthropocene” (use worksheet)
- 9/19 Monday: How do we know the history of ancient civilizations?
- 9/21 Wednesday: Shipping, Trade, and War in the Mediterranian and Indian Oceans
- 9/23 Friday: What Frontinus tells us about Roman water and society
Week 6: Medieval tradition and local knowledge
Read Hoffman Environmental History of Medieval Europe
- 9/26 Monday: Columella, the Georgics, and Roman ideas about nature
- 9/28 Wednesday: Feudal land use and traditional knowledge.
- 9/30 Friday: What is a commons?
Week 7: Where was the center of the medieval world?
Read Abu Lughod Before European Hegemony, primary documents on the plague
- 10/3 Monday: What was the Medieval world system?
- 10/5 Wednesday: The Medieval Warm Period, the Little Ice Age, the Global Crisis.
- 10/7 Friday: Mapping The Plague
- Hand out Columbian Exchange scavenger hunt worksheets!
- Second Draft due in discussion sections.
Week 8: Fall Break/The New World
Read: Lewis and Maslin on the Anthropocene Crosby Columbian Exchange
- 10/10 Monday: Columbus Day, no class.
- 10/12 Wednesday: The Columbian Exchange as a starting point for the Anthropocene
- 10/14 Friday: Peer editing of second drafts
- Bring the results of the Columbian Exchange scavenger hunt to class.
Week 9: Environmental histories of slavery
Read extracts from Northup, Equiano; {Article on Maronage TBA}
- 10/17 Monday: Debt, water, and rice, in the Atlantic World
- 10/19 Wednesday: Cotton, corn, and the nitrogenous anthropocene
- 10/21 Friday: Environmental histories of escape
Week 10: Frontiers
Read Turner “The Frontier”; Savoy, Trace; Cronon, “Trouble With Wilderness”
- 10/17 Monday: Frontiers, wilderness, maronage, and colonies
- 10/19 Wednesday: Ecology in the Pacific World
- 10/21 Friday: Manahatta Project (meet in budig computer lab)
Week 11: Environmental histories of industrialization
- 10/31 Monday: Waterpower and Coal
- 11/2 Wednesday: Coal and global empire
- 11/4 Friday: Stream restoration and industrial development
Week 12: Environmental histories of chemistry
- 11/7 Monday: Aniline dyes and the beginnings of business chemistry
- 11/9 Wednesday: The ecology of oil extraction
- 11/11 Friday: Restoring landscapes of chemical pollution
Week 13: Nuclear Ecology Odum, Environment, Power, and Society; Alexeivich, Voices From Chernobyl
- 11/14 Monday: The nuclear origins of global ecology
- 11/16 Wednesday: The timelines of Chernobyl
- 11/18 Friday: Restoring nuclear landscapes
Week 14: Computers and Ecology no readings
- 11/21 Monday: Environmental History on the Oregon Trail (meet in computer classroom, location TBA)
- 11/23 Wednesday: Thanksgiving Break
- 11/25 Friday: Thanksgiving Break
Week 15: Globalized Environments
Read Chepesuik “Where the Chips Fall” Davis “Consumption Based Accounting for Carbon Emissions”
- 11/28 Monday: Climate Models
- 11/30 Wednesday: Clean chips and dirty water
- 12/1 Friday: Identifying greenwashing.
Week 16: Synthesis
- 12/5 Monday: Drawing together the threads of Environmental history
- 12/7 Wednesday: Review, wrap up.