The study of the environment is urgently important in an era of global climatic change. Geography and other social sciences have long offered critical ways to understand the entangled relationship of humans and their physical environment. This course is an introduction to the many ways to think critically about this relationship, drawing from a robust body of scholarly debate. The course will engage with many topics that explore the significance of the environment in relation to human societies: we will look at the construction of nature as a foundational idea in human cultures, the intersection of economies and ecologies, the histories and legacies of colonial environments, political ecology and conflicts over resources, the shaping of the non-human animal, the science and politics of climate change, and engage with critical questions of environmental justice in an ever changing and globalized world. We will not focus on any one region, instead opting for a global survey of cases that will allow us to critically interrogate the meaning of nature and the environment in relation to human societies past, present, and future.
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