Time Schedule:
Linda L Nash
HSTAA 221
Seattle Campus
Survey of the relationship between nature and human history, including the impact of the non-human environment on American history and the environmental effects of colonization, urbanization, and consumerism; the cultural construction of nature in different eras and its social implications; the sources and limits of modern environmental politics.
Class description
In this class, we will move beyond traditional historical frameworks that consider only human actions and human society to ask how people have transformed the natural environments of North America and how those environments have influenced American history. We will study how the history of politics, society and culture has been connected to history of disease, weeds, forests, fields, rivers, and air. Chronologically, the course covers the period beginning with European colonization through the late 20th century (ca. 1500-2000). Lectures and readings will survey the environmental impacts of European colonization, industrialization and urbanization, American imperial expansion, and mass consumerism. We will also study how "nature” has been defined and represented in American culture at different moments (e.g., in landscape painting, National Parks, and Disney films), and debate what difference those representations have made. Finally we will consider how and why the modern environmental movement emerged in the decades after World War II, why it took the particular shape that it did, and whose interests it has represented.
Student learning goals
To understand how to think historically; to be able to historically contextualize specific events, decisions, and developments in US history.
To understand how environmental conditions and environmental problems have been and are intertwined with US social, cultural, and political history.
General method of instruction
Lectures and discussion sections
Recommended preparation
No prerequisites.
Class assignments and grading
Course requirements (subject to change) include participation in discussion sections, an in-class midterm exam, a 10-page paper, and a final exam.
