CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES
(HIS 201x)
A "ruined forest" in Algeria, c. 1950, from a French forestry manual.
Spring 2012
Wednesdays, 12-3, SSH 4202
Dr. D. K. Davis; Office: 3225 SS&H; E-mail: geovet@ucdavis.edu
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This graduate seminar will introduce students to
global environmental history and overview the foundational works in the
field with a focus on the colonial period to the present. A major
goal of the class is to demonstrate the direct contemporary policy
relevance
of environmental history to sectors such as environment, development,
agriculture, public health and many others. That is, it focuses
on environmental history for a sustainable future. Environmental
history is an inherently interdisciplinary field and we will draw on
the works of historians, geographers, and other scholars to fully
understand the richness and depth of the environmental history
literature. We will explore several different approaches to
environmental history and study the strengths and weaknesses of these
various approaches. Some of the more recent work in environmental
history grapples with very productive critical approaches that include
the consideration of gender, race/ethnicity and class, political
economy, post-colonial studies, science studies, the politics of
representation, and social/environmental justice, etc. into the writing
of environmental history. We will survey many of these recent
works as we focus on student research interests in the last half of the
class. Please note that this seminar does not focus on North America. I assume that if you are interested in American environmental history that you will have taken Louis Warren’s graduate seminar “Environmental History & Literature” which focuses on North America during winter quarter. |