220004 Going Global: Writing Histories about Environmental Entanglements and Planetary Politics (S+BS) (WiSe 2026/2027)

Important:
- There is an OBLIGATORY ONLINE SESSION to plan the seminar on Friday, October 16th 2026, 2.00pm – 3.00pm sharp. This is the zoom-link to the meeting: https://uni-bielefeld.zoom-x.de/j/68655000044?pwd=RzjGGDmg3Zgflxbi4OqZ2DUp5pIR64.1
- Please check the dates of the blockseminar sessions (usually on Saturdays) beforehand (see ekvv) to make sure you can attend these sessions.

Comment:

It has already been 25 years since the Earth system scientist Paul Crutzen coined the term Anthropocene (2000) during a talk—almost on a whim. The concept not only stuck but swept through academia, taking root in nearly every discipline and compelling them to engage with the environment. Dipesh Chakrabarty, a postcolonial historian who turned toward environmental history, was the first to introduce the “Anthropocene” to the humanities and social sciences with The Climate of History: Four Theses (2009), an article that quickly attracted both enthusiastic supporters and sharp critics. With this, the Anthropocene entered the field and significantly accelerated the rise of the Environmental Humanities, which had begun to emerge around the same time as the proposed epoch. This seminar follows the question: How can historians meet this challenge of global proportions?

Academic fields, disciplines, and concepts only gain legitimacy and prominence when they resonate with broader societal developments. The Environmental Humanities grew out of intensifying public concerns in the 21st century about the future of the Earth and its inhabitants. These concerns had long fueled environmental movements before legislators and policymakers began addressing ecological issues. The Anthropocene inherited this active debate on climate change and pushed it further, raising new questions about the Earth’s tipping points. The environmental histories we construct are inseparable from how we understand both our societies and the environments we inhabit. In the first part of the seminar, we will focus on how society and academia co-produce environmental histories, how Environmental History emerged as a field, and what the current historiographical trends look like.

In the second part of the seminar we zoom in on approaches to writing history "globally" which foreground connections between places accross the planet. In his groundlaying work Environmentalism. A Global History, Indian historian Guha Ramachandra, for instance, documents “the flow of ideas across cultures, the way in which the environmental movement in one country has been invigorated or transformed by infusions from outside“. Bielefeld University can claim fame of her own with regards to transnational/ environmental history. In Nature and Power. A Global History of the Environment Joachim Radkau, one of Germany`s most prolific historians, rejects the idea of a single world narrative and instead – not unlike Guha – believes that a global history should comprise connections between regions, tansfers of ecological practices, curculations of ideas and must always pay attention to local cases and circumstances. The Center of InterAmerican Studies (CIAS) at Bielefeld University has brought forward their own trans-cultural approach with the Entangled History (see the website: https://www.uni-bielefeld/einrichtungen/cias). Entanglements are interconnections (via materials, people or ideas) that do not only link nations or civilisations but actually produce these entities themselves through their connectedness. Starting from approaches that highlight relations, transfers, entanglements, students will encounter interconnected conservation and environmental justice histories that encompass places such as the USA and Latin America (especially Argentina and Brazil), South Africa, India, Vietnam and Japan.

English, Access, Support:
While this class will be taught in English and all the reading materials will be in English, perfect English skills are NOT expected. Students are also welcome “to try a class in English“ – and will find a classroom supportive of all varieties and levels of English. Students from other other-than-history courses are also welcome as we cherish interdisciplinary exchange (not only from the Humanities, but also the Sciences) – please check whether your department gives credit for this seminar.
A packed reserved shelf with up-to-date introductions, encyclopedias, handbooks, standard works on global history and many case studies from countries and regions around the world is already available in the history department (see: Damberg Stavroulias 68). For a full list – including links to many ebooks – look up the electronic list of the reserved shelf on the homepage of the library.
All the reading for the four sessions is already available in the Lernraum and the dates have been scheduled in a way to allow for enough reading time.

Bibliography

Avenell, Simon. 2018. Transnational Japan in the Global Environmental Movement.

Beinart, William. 2007. Environment and empire.

Chaiklin, Martha (et al., eds.). 2020. Animal Trade Histories in the Indian Ocean World.

Chakrabarty, Dipesh. 2009. The climate of history: Four theses.

Crutzen, Paul J. "The ‘anthropocene’(2000)." Paul J. Crutzen and the anthropocene: A new epoch in earth’s history. 2022.

David, Benac. 2026. Rainforest Radicals : A History of Rainforest Action Network and Transnational Organizing.

Guha, Ramachandra. 1997. Environmentalism. A Global History.

—. 2023. Speaking With Nature. The Origin of the Indian Environmental Movement.

—, Martinez-Alier, Juan. 2013. Varieties of environmentalism : essays north and south.

Haraway, Donna. 2016. Staying with the Trouble. Making Kin in the Chthulucene.

Heise, Ursula K. 2008. Sense of place and sense of planet : the environmental imagination of the global.

Heise, Ursula (ed.). 2024. Environment and narrative in Vietnam.

Kaltmeier, Olaf. 2021. National parks from north to south : an entangled history of conservation and colonization in Argentina.

— (eds). 2017. Politics of entanglement in the Americas : connecting transnational flows and local perspectives.

Martinez-Alier, Juan. 2023. Land, water, air and freedom : the making of world movements for environmental justice.

Morgan, Philip D.; McNeill, J. R.; Mulcahy, Matthew; Schwartz, Stuart B. 2022. Sea and land: An environmental history of the Caribbean.

McNeill, John Robert. 2000. Something new under the sun: an environmental history of the twentieth-century world.

Pellow, David N. 2007. Resisting global toxics : transnational movements for environmental justice.

Rohland, Eleonora. 2021. Entangled Histories and the Environment? Socio-Environmental Transformations in the Carribbean. 1492-1800.

Villanuevo, Gonzalo. 2018. A Transnational History of the Australian Animal Movement. 1970 -2015.