SCHC 328 H03 26469

Humanities, HistoryCiv, GHS

Notes:

This course combines three related fields of history—environment, technology, and development—to examine how a wide range of people have thought about, pursued, and even fought against various forms of sustainability in the world’s past. Often linked with contemporary environmental movements that have linked mass production and mass consumption to ecological destruction and planetary crisis, the term “sustainable” has longer and more varied history. As formerly colonized societies fought for their freedom in the postwar era, “sustainable development” referenced new nations’ ability to achieve repeated levels of economic growth and thus a capacity to create new citizens, complete with “modern” social welfare rights, out of former colonial citizens. Even when historical actors did not use the term, sustainable, they, too, grappled with issues central the word’s contemporary meanings: a desire to build and pass on worthwhile communities; the need, intent, and joy of creating, repairing, and caring for other things, living and not; and concerns about the way their lives drew from and touched, for good or ill, those far from them in time and place.  To explore these themes, this class moves from ancient times to present concerns about climate change in a new historical epoch, the Anthropocene. Through a set of interdisciplinary case studies, it visits each continent, including the rarest in historical studies: Antarctica.