HIST1927

Our current climate crisis calls for a rethinking of the way humans interact with the environment, but such efforts are not new: already in the nineteenth century, people warned about ecological destruction and called for a change in behavior toward the natural world. This first-year seminar explores how different groups of people have understood and responded to environmental degradation in North America. The focus will be on those who made urgent calls for a change in human behavior toward nature, from Indigenous peoples past and present to ecocentrist groups like Greenpeace and Earth First! Topics include protests against ecological damage and loss, experiments in minimalism, the call for preservation and national parks, environmental racism and the environmental justice movement, and various forms of environmental activism. Students will develop historically informed positions about an array of ecological options, experiments, viewpoints that preceded and shaped current forms of environmentalism.

001475