Environmental History of Iran

3 Credits · Level: Undergraduate

In this seminar, students will master major works and debates in the emerging field of Iranian environmental history. Iran’s modern history has played out within a very unique set of environmental circumstances. Lying in the rain shadow of the Zagros Mountains, much of the Iranian Plateau has little rainfall, with farming communities suffering frequent drought alongside large numbers of mobile animal herders surviving on seasonal grasses in marginal lands. How have these environmental pressures shaped Iran’s modern history? We will use an environmental framework to explore how climate change, water scarcity, mobility, and environmental hazards like famine, disease, and earthquakes have shaped modern Iran’s history from the Little Ice Age in the 17th century to the dire environmental challenges shaping the politics of the Islamic Republic today. We will also explore the ways in which modernizing states have attempted to reshape Iran’s environment to serve human ends, from oil industrialization to railway and infrastructural development to the creation of Iran’s nuclear program. Underlying this seminar is the question of how environments are implicated in the rise of global inequality in the modern world.