LFU:online

The rise and decline of states, empires, and civilizations in world history from ancient times to the modern period, seen from an environmental perspective.

This class is an introduction to environmental history in a global context – a history across cultures, nations, geography and time. It is not meant to be an exhaustive class in which you will be taught everything you will ever need to know about environmental history around the world. Instead, this class is intended to help you to explore some basic issues and themes. Given our location in Innsbruck, we will spend much of our time focusing on Europe. Over the next semester, we will discuss nature and the birth of civilizations, epidemics from the Plague of Justinian to the Black Death, the impact of European colonialism on the global environment, and the rise of the worldwide environmental movement. We will also range beyond Europe, however, to East Asia, South America, Australia, and Africa, and across time from the Ice Age to the present day. In the process we will also touch on a wide spectrum of historical approaches: social history, labor history, political and policy history, women’s history, and more – not to mention biology, ecology, anthropology, and a number of other interdisciplinary influences.