Climate Change, Environment, and Society

Undergraduate / Graduate

Against the backdrop of 21st-century planetary emergencies, this discussion-based course will investigate how natural and anthropogenic climate change have influenced historical relationships between humans and their environments. Organized chronologically, the course's three thematic units will focus on: (1) natural variations in regional climates before the advent of fossil fuels; (2) the emergence of greenhouse gases as a result of fossil fuel dependency, technology, and infrastructure; and (3) climate change science and global politics. Students will employ historical methods to explore periods of social, political, economic, technological, and ecological transformation, including but not limited to: the rise and "collapse" of Central American populations; European exploration and the Little Ice Age; colonization, Indigenous dispossession, and slavery in the Atlantic World; the Industrial Revolution and the entrenchment of global fossil fuel systems; population growth, (sub)urbanization, and the Great Acceleration of the mid-20th century; and the emergence of modern climate change science and denialism. Required texts consisting of scholarly book chapters and journal articles will be used to contextualize and critically analyze a variety of historical documents.