220104 “Natural Resource Use in the Americas, 1500-present” (K) (SoSe 2017)

This course serves as a contextualization of the Seminar „Wood in the Americas, 1750 to present - Tracing a Resource from the Solar to the Fossil - to a New Solar? - Age“ (co-taught with Prof. Dr. Joachim Radkau) as well as of the Seminar "'Development' in Latin America: Theory and Practice" (taught by Dr. Tobias Reu). Furthermore, it can also be studied as an optional course in the BGHS Graduate Program. In a mix of reading and research-based classes we will work towards an overview of the evolution of resource and energy use in both North and Latin America from 1500 to the present. We will retrace the ruptures and continuities in this process that lead up to our present troubled age of global climate change, ‘Energiewende’ and the ‘Anthropocene’. Our approach will be an economic and environmental historical one. Expect a mix of primary source-reading, empirical studies and theoretical texts. The course will be held in a 9 hour introductory block taught by Asst. Prof. Dr. Eleonora Rohland (Bielefeld) and in a 15 hour block co-taught with international guest lecturer Prof. Dr. Ted Beatty (Notre Dame), Prof. Rohland will head the 6 hour summary block of the course.

Requirements for participation, required level

This course will be held in English, so your reading and conversation skills should be sufficient to participate actively in the course

Bibliography

Coley, David A. Energy and Climate Change. Chichester: Wiley, 2008.
Crosby, Alfred. Ecolocigal Imperialism. The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900 - 1900. Cambidge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.
Marks, Robert. The Origins of the Modern World. A Global and Ecological Narrative. World social change. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002.
McNeill, John Robert. Something New Under the Sun. An Environmental History of the Twentieth-Century World. New York: Norton, 2000.
McNeill, John Robert, and Peter Engelke. The Great Acceleration. An Environmental History of the Anthropocene Since 1945. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2014.
Pfister, Christian. Das 1950er Syndrom. Der Weg in die Konsumgesellschaft. Publikation der Akademischen Kommission der Universität Bern. Bern: Haupt, 1995.
Pomeranz, Kenneth. The great divergence. China, Europe, and the making of the modern world economy. The Princeton economic history of the western world. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000.
Sieferle, Rolf Peter. The Subterranean Forest. Energy Systems and the Industrial Revolution. Cambridge: The White Horse Press, 2001.
Smil, Vaclav. Energy Transitions. History, Requirements, Prospects. Santa Barbara: Praeger, 2010.
Smil, Vaclav. Energy in World History. Boulder: Westview Press, 1994.