Designing Nature

3-0-9 units · Graduate

Explores ideas about the design of nature in the early modern period (ca. 1450–1800), primarily in Europe and its global contact zones. Studies efforts from this period to categorize, analyze, and transform environments to meet the demands of scientific inquiry and political economy, through historical case studies in environmental, landscape, engineering, and architectural history. Traces the origins of modern notions of growth, development, improvement, and capitalism, and their legacies in contemporary landscapes and economic systems.