HIST 2840
Introduction to Environmental History
Fall 2025
Topics
- Columbian Exchange
- Disease environments
- Colonial landscapes
- Population and Malthusianism
- Conservation and wilderness
- Pollution and environmental racism
- Nuclear risk
- Changing concepts of nature
Readings
- William Cronon, Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England, any edition.
- Raymond Williams, “Ideas of Nature.”
- Miller, Environmental History of Latin America, pp. 49–56 (title abbreviated in source).
- Thomas Malthus, “The Principle of Population” (1798), excerpts.
- William Cronon, “The Trouble with Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature.”
- Rachel Carson, Silent Spring (1962), excerpts.
- Chavis, “Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States” (1987), excerpts.
- Spears, “Contaminated Bodies, Contaminated Soil.”
- Brown, Plutopia, pp. 1–10, 57–64, 282–286.
- Jedediah Purdy, “Nature,” Cultural History of Ideas in the Modern Age (2025), pp. 91–108.
- Assigned films: Cane Toads: An Unnatural History (1987); Babushkas of Chernobyl.
Sources
- Course catalogue ↗2026–2027
- Curriculum sample or proposal ↗Fall 2025
- Supporting course outline in the November 2025 curriculum dossier. The new permanent course number may be applied to a historical special-topics syllabus; no current offering is inferred. Office-hours heading explicitly identifies Fall 2025. Required book can be borrowed; purchase is strongly recommended.