6112.23 - Environmental History

6112.23

Environmental History

10

Upper secondary education or equivalent qualification.

The purpose of the course is to provide students with basic knowledge, concepts, and analytical tools to understand the historical roots to contemporary environmental problems, as well as tools to describe and analyze changes in nature, culture, society, and politics from the perspective of environmental history, and their implications for long-term sustainability and human well-being.

• Basic concepts and approaches in environmental history. • The development of the field of environmental history. • Global environmental history. • Environmental and cultural determinism in historical understanding. • Perceptions of nature, economy, and environmental change through time. • Sustainability, human well-being, and environmental change in a long-term perspective. • Modernity, energy, consumption, and climate change. • Agriculture/fisheries and the environment. • Ecological imperialism/ecologies of empire.

Learning and teaching in the course is facilitated through lectures, student presentations and smaller group exercises.

Upon completion of the course, students must demonstrate that they are able to: • Describe how environmental history developed as a transdisciplinary field, mainly during the past half century. • Describe main approaches in environmental history. • Explain the role and significance of culture and perceptions of nature on economic practices and ways to exploit nature. • Describe and analyze how environmental change has impacted society, politics, and culture and vice versa. • Describe and analyze the interrelations between sustainability, human well-being, and the environment in a long-term perspective.

Written home assignment/paper.

Internal

7-

Required reading list is approx. 1500 pages.

Ragnheiður Bogadóttir