This course deals with the relationship between humans and the environment with special attention to how that relationship has changed over time in America. It addresses the ways that environmental history can improve our understanding of American history more generally and of contemporary environmental challenges.
Prerequisite
3 credits of HIST; completion of 45 credits
Textbooks and Materials
Section 801
Required
- Taming Manhattan: Environmental Battles in the Antebellum City (2017)
McNeur, Catherine
ISBN: 978-0674979758 - Crimes Against Nature: Squatters, Poachers, Thieves, and the Hidden History of American Conservation (2014)
Jacoby, Karl
ISBN: 978-0520282292 - Vacationland: Tourism and Environment in the Colorado High Country (2014)
Philpott, William
ISBN: 978-0295994338 - Major Problems in American Environmental History, 3rd Ed.
Merchant, Carolyn
ISBN: 978-0495912422
Textbooks and materials can be purchased at the CSU Bookstore unless otherwise indicated.
Students should be able to obtain used books.
Instructors
Douglas Sheflin
douglas.sheflin@colostate.edu
I earned my PhD at the University of Colorado at Boulder where I studied American history with an emphasis on environmental history and the history of the American West. My approach to teaching is pretty straightforward. Historians study the past so that we can achieve some sort of “leverage on the moment.” History does not repeat itself, but there are certainly echoes, and as we look at the past we try to identify key moments that can help us understand the present. That observation informs my approach in both the residential and virtual classroom.
