Global environmental history in the 20th century

fakultatywne

The course is an introduction to the most important problems of environmental history of the 20th century such as changes in agriculture, the burning of fossil fuels and the production of petrochemicals, industrial waste and nuclear waste, and anthropogenic transformation of landscapes.

Through case studies and more general readings, we will discuss the most important environmental processes taking place in the 20th century, in particular during the period known as the Great Acceleration. The Great Acceleration refers to a post-WWII era during which humans exerted an unprecedented influence over their environment.

The course will cover a wide range of topics relating to the environmental history of the 20th century including the transformation of agriculture (chemicalization, mechanization, monoculturalization), great hydroengineering projects, the burning of fossil fuels, the spread of synthetic materials, industrial and nuclear waste, the development of environmental discourse in the East and the West.

The course aims to show the global and planetary nature of environmental changes while underscoring the local experiences and tactics of resistance to ecological harm. The differences in the experiences between the Global South and the Global North, and between the socialist and capitalist approaches to the environment will also be the focus of the course.

This is a general bibliography and not a reading list. The readings will be available on the Kampus platform.

Ault J. (2021). Saving Nature under Socialism: Transnational Environmentalism in East Germany, 1968–1990. Cambridge University Press.

Brown Kate, (2013) Plutopia: Nuclear Families, Atomic Cities, and the Great Soviet and American Plutonium Disasters. Oxford University Press.

Fleischman, T. (2020). Communist Pigs: An Animal History of East Germany’s Rise and Fall. University of Washington Press.

McNeill, J. R., & Engelke, P. (2014). The Great Acceleration: An Environmental History of the Anthropocene since 1945. Harvard University Press.

Hecht, G. (2012). Being Nuclear: Africans and the Global Uranium Trade. The MIT Press.

Olšáková, D. (2016). In the Name of the Great Work: Stalin’s Plan for the Transformation of Nature and its Impact in Eastern Europe. Berghahn Books.

Romero, A. M. (2022). Economic Poisoning: Industrial Waste and the Chemicalization of American Agriculture. University of California Press.

Russell, E. (2001). War and Nature: Fighting Humans and Insects with Chemicals from World War I to Silent Spring. Cambridge University Press.

Santiago M. (2006) The Ecology of Oil: Environment, Labor, and the Mexican Revolution, 1900–1938.

Uekötter, F. (2023). The Vortex: An Environmental History of the Modern World. The University of Pittsburgh Press.

Wells, C., (2012) Car Country. An Environmental History, University of Washington Press.

Woodhouse, Keith. (2018). The Ecocentrists: A History of Radical Environmentalism. Columbia University Press.

After completing this course, you will be able to identify the most important environmental processes taking place in the 20th century. You will be able to trace their origins and describe their consequences for humans, non-humans, more-than-humans, and the planet.

You will understand the connection between local developments and their consequences on a global and planetary scale. You will understand the colonial and post-colonial aspects of processes shaping the environment in the 20th century.

You will understand the interdisciplinary character of environmental history.

You will be able to use terminology relating to the environmental history of the 20th century.

You will be able to engage in public debate on environmental issues with a fuller understanding of the roots of the climate crisis.