LFU:online

Students have a command of the topics dealt with in the courses and are able to contextualize and interpret the acquired factual knowledge. They are confident in recognizing of relationships and in structuring historic routines and processes.

Environmental history asks how societal processes interacted with ecological processes in the past and how humans related to the rest of nature. In this VU we first deal with the conceptual foundations of environmental history and then turn, with a focus on Europe, to the profound environmental historical changes of the last 250 years. During this period, interventions in the natural environment took on unprecedented proportions and had far-reaching, partly unintended consequences for societies and their environments; consequences that must concern us today and in the future.

Text-based discussion and presentations

Continuous participation and presentation.

Required reading: Kupper, Patrick (2021): Umweltgeschichte. Göttingen: UTB (Einführungen in die Geschichtswissenschaft. Neuere und Neueste Geschichte). https://www.utb.de/doi/10.36198/9783838557298 The book can be purchased at the beginning of the semester in Studia.

Three environmental history guest lectures at the History Institutes Research Colloquium are an integral part of this course (Mondays Nov. 28, Dec. 5, and Dec. 12, 2022, 5:15-6:45 p.m.).