HIST/GEOG 377: Environmental History of North America

Fall 2020: GEOG/HIST 377 traces the reciprocal influences of humans and nature in North American and global contexts from contact to the present. The course explores the impact of pathogens on demography, settlement on ecology, and technology on landscape. Lectures also trace North Americans’ evolving understandings of and relationships with nature, charting the rise and consequences of conservationist, preservationist, and environmentalist impulses. As an upper-division, interdisciplinary course, GEOG 377 and HIST 377 contribute to student awareness and comprehension of the social, cultural, and environmental factors that have shaped human events across a broad reach of North America, and the cultural factors that have reshaped continental and global ecology.    

Topics: Colonialism, Politics, Class, Culture, Markets, Urbanization, Technology

Required Texts:
James Webb, Tropical Pioneers: Human Agency and Ecological Change in the Highlands of Sri Lanka, 1800-1900 (Ohio, 2002).
Thomas M. Lekan, Our Gigantic Zoo: A German Quest to Save the Serengeti (Oxford, 2020).
Eric Carter, Enemy in the Blood: Malaria, Environment, and Development in Argentina (Tuscaloosa: Univ. of Alabama Press, 2012)
Gregory Cushman, Guano and the Opening of the Pacific World (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013)
Primary documents available online through provided urls, the SFU Electronic Journals portal, and Canvas Course Site

Prerequisites:
Geography students: 60 credit hours including 8 hours of upper division Geography or History
History students: 45 credit hours including 9 units of lower division Geography

Course Evaluations:
Midterm                30%
Paper                    30%
Final                     30%
Quizzes                 10%