This course is designed to engage students in conversations about particular perspectives on the history of a selected nation, region, people, culture, institution, or historical phenomenon as specified by the respective instructor. By taking this course, students will come to understand, and develop an appreciation for, some combination of: the origins and evolution of the people, cultures, and/or political, economic, and/or social institutions of a particular region(s) of the world. They may also explore how human encounters shaped individual and collective identities and the complex political, economic, and social orders of the region/nation/communities under study. Instructors and subject will vary.

This course examines the origins and consequences of global fossil fuel dependency from the nineteenth to the late-twentieth century. At its core, the course seeks to provide an explanatory framework for how and why fossil fuels became such foundational features of global economic life, and the prospects and possibilities of transitioning away from historical dependencies on fossil energy in the era of climate change. The first part of the course will discuss the origins of fossil energy systems within histories of empire, global capitalism, and the transformation of global resource environments since 1800. The second part will examine the rise of large-scale fossil fuel infrastructures—in particular, the electricity grid and petrochemical fertilizer production—as conduits of new forms of politics, energy dependency, and global inequality in the twentieth century. In the third and final part of the course, we will discuss how the acceleration of fossil fuel use led to the scientific discovery of climate change, along with new ideas of how to mitigate catastrophic global warming.

Repeat Rules

Requirements class fulfills