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2025-2026 Academic Year

Fall 2025

HIST 151 History of Environment
Examines the interaction between humans and the natural environment in long-term global context. Explores the problem of sustainable human uses of world environments in various societies from prehistory to the present. Also serves as an introduction to the subfield of environmental history, which integrates evidence from various scientific disciplines with traditional documentary and oral sources. Topics include: environmental effects of human occupation, the origins of agriculture, colonial encounters, industrial revolution, water and politics, natural resources frontiers, and diverse perceptions of nature.

Spring 2026

HIST 206 American Environmental History
Examines the interaction between humans and the natural environment in the history of North America. Explores the problem of sustainable human uses of the North America environment form the pre-colonial period to the present. Also serves as an introduction to the subfield of environmental history, which integrates evidence from various scientific disciplines with traditional documentary and oral sources. Topics include: American Indian uses of the environment, colonial frontiers, agricultural change, industrialization, urbanization, westward expansion, the Progressive-Era conservation movement, changes in lifestyle and consumption including their increasingly global impact, shifts in environmental policy, and the rise of the post-World War II environmental movement.

HIST 404 Nature
In this class, the capstone of the history major, we will build on the skills you have already developed for a semester long research project. As you did in History 204, in this class you will gather and analyze primary source documents to help you understand a specific research question. As you did in your 300-level classes you will contextualize your primary source work in terms of the conversations of other historians and will work to meaningfully contribute to or critique those conversations. Finally, you will assemble new stories and arguments, supported by powerful evidence. This is a writing-intensive methods class. Therefore, our goal is not to memorize material but to develop skills, and to reflect and sharpen our intellectual process, through discussion, peer review, and continual work with primary and secondary sources. To promote meaningful in-class intellectual work, your semester-long research projects will all explore aspects of a common theme. "Nature" is one of the richest words in the English language-encompassing fundamental ideas about landscape, science, religions, human bodies, and social formations. We will explore ideas about nature and the natural as a jumping off point for our projects. In doing so, we will come to question our own understandings of this word and the range of claims, practices, and policies it is invoked to justify.