NATURE, CULTURE AND SOCIETY: THEMES IN EUROPEAN ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY

This course is an educational activity for the Master’s Degree/Laurea Magistrale in Environmental Humanities. It is an introduction to the growing field of environmental history and explores how human society and culture, non-human actors, natural elements, and medicine, science and technology shaped the European past in its broader global context. We will look at how human societies, animals, microbiota, and food plants have acted as agents in the past, from the local to the transnational level, over a broad time span, c.1500 - c.1850.

- To be able to situate local experience, perception, and causes of environmental change within a broader context
- To be able to discuss historical events through the lens of how human relationships with nature and the environment have changed
- To have developed analytical and critical skills in the use of historical evidence and in the uses other scholars have made of them, in terms of methodologies and approaches

There are no prerequisites for this course besides the ability to read and speak English fluently, in order to read the materials and take an active part in the discussion, and an enthusiasm and readiness to engage with historical discussions and readings.

This course is an introduction to the growing field of environmental history and explores how human society and culture, non-human actors, natural elements, and medicine, science and technology shaped the European past in its broader global context. We will look at how human societies, animals, micro-organisms and food plants have acted as agents in the past, from the local to the transnational level, over a broad time span, 1500-1850. The course is organised into three main sections, focusing on: 1) epidemic disease, 2) the Columbian exchange and its consequences, and 3) water provision and sanitation.

Background books:
Isneberg, Andrew, The Oxford Handbook of Environmental History (Oxford: OUP 2017)
Richards, John, The unending frontier: an environmental history of the early modern world (Berkeley: U of California Press 2003)
McNeill, William, Plagues and peoples (New York, 1976, 1998)
Gentilcore, David, Food and health in early modern Europe. London, 2016
Crosby, Alfred, The Columbian exchange: biological and cultural consequences of 1492 (Wesport and London, 1973, 2003

Books available for book critique assignment (choose one):
Cavert, William, The Smoke of London: Energy and Environment in the Early Modern City (Cambridge: CUP, 2016)
Ciriacono, Salvatore, Acque e agricoltura : Venezia, l'Olanda e la bonifica europea in età moderna (Milano : F. Angeli, 1994). Eng. trans. Building on water : Venice, Holland and the construction of the european landscape in early modern times (Oxford : Berghahn Books, 2006)
De Bernardi, Alberto, Il mal della rosa: denutrizione e pellagra nelle campagne italiane fra '800 e '900 (Milano : F. Angeli, 1984)
Preto, Paolo, Epidemia, paura e politica nell'Italia moderna (Roma-Bari : Laterza, 1987)
Rinne, Katherine, The Waters of Rome: Aqueducts, Fountains, and the Birth of the Baroque City (New Haven, Yale UP 2010)
Sori, Ercole, La città e i rifiuti. Ecologia urbana dal Medioevo al primo Novecento (Bologna: il Mulino, 2001)

Additional readings for the individual sessions, in the form of scholarly articles and primary source documents, will be provided throughout the course through Moodle

This will be ascertained by means of seminar participation and assessed by means of a book critique and and oral examination.

Lectures
Seminars based around reading and in-class discussion of primary and secondary materials

English

The course will be delivered in English

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