220135 Global Environmental History (S) (WiSe 2024/2025)

Global environmental history is new historical approach to the complex relationships between human societies and the environment on the largest scales. It came to prominence with the growing recognition that the human transformation of the planet has been reaching unprecedented levels and representing a qualitatively new forms of human-environment relations.

The course offers an introduction to global environmental history in three steps.

1. The first three classes of the course offer a brief overview of the main historiographical premises of the approach.

2. The seven classes of the mid-course revolve around the discussion of a sample of global environmental histories in order to introduce the historical trajectories of the modern and contemporary worlds, as well as the central themes of global environmental history, such as energy, resource extraction, and colonialism.

3. Finally, after the discussion of concrete historiographical works, the last three classes of the course put global environmental history a its broader context by addressing three ways in which the approach extends the scope of contemporary historical scholarship.

For each class, one reading is assigned. The course syllabus and the course readings are available on Moodle.