Spring 2020 Course Spotlight: The Climate Crisis in Historical Perspective

desert image

Global Environmental History from the Paleolithic to the Present, co-taught by Professors Anne Berg and Marcy Norton, takes on the whole world and “all” of its environments. It gets students to think about broad themes on both macro and micro scales, and the different and changing interactions between humans and their environments. The course also pushes back against the assumptions that the “stuff” of the environment is only now of particular concern. While environmentalism and certainly the very justified fears about climate change are indeed very new – less than fifty years old mind you – humans have always struggled with their environments, depended on them, tried to understand them, shape and master them, whether they encountered environmental forces in the form of weather, plagues, acts of god, idyllic forests, grazing pastures, smoke stacks, garbage dumps, oil fields or backed-up sewers.

 

Professor Anne Berg explains why it’s important to study the climate crisis from a historical perspective HERE

 

HIST 060

Global Environmental History From Paleolithic To the Present    

Instructors: Professor Marcy Norton and Professor Anne Berg

TR 12:00 PM-01:30 PM

 

Also of interest:

 

HIST 234-301

Wastes of War: A Century of Destruction

Instructors: Professor Anne Berg

W 02:00 PM-05:00 PM