FSEM 179   Introduction to Environmental History

Faculty Profile for Professor Roller

Explores the changing relationships between people and the environment in modern history. These relationships can be intimate and mundane (mowing a lawn, eating an avocado) or much grander in scale (testing nuclear weapons, creating a national park); they are also connected to global processes of colonialism and industrial development. From the late nineteenth century to the present, students explore how animals, plants, pathogens, and chemical compounds have shaped and been shaped by societies and cultures. Tracing changes across this period helps see how the rise of oil—which went from being a relatively small part of the world economy in 1900 to become its main source of energy—has transformed daily life and ecosystems across the planet. This history is also considered for its relevance to contemporary environmental politics and activism. Students who successfully complete this seminar receive credit for HIST 224 and can satisfy the social relations, institutions, and agents area of inquiry requirement or he confronting collective challenges liberal arts practice requirement.

Heather Roller, Professor of History and Environmental Studies, studies global environmental history. Her current research focuses on pesticide use in agriculture and anti-pesticide activism in the United States since the 1970s.