The Politics of Natural Disasters in America From Colonial Times to the Present

3 units

From a series of back-to-back 1775 hurricanes and other meteorological happenings that contestants in the American Revolution interpreted as divine interventions in--and commentary about--the political and military storms of their era, to the New Madrid earthquakes of the early nineteenth century, Dust Bowl conditions in the 1930s and the physical and cultural devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina early in this decade, natural disasters have provoked intense social and political reactions in the United States. This course explores historically how such events have made pressing provocative questions about the relief role of government in a democracy, how human beings interact with and alter their natural environments, whether natural disasters are ultimately to be understood meterologically or as acts of God.