AMST 367
Colonialism and the Environment
Last Offered Fall 2022
Division II Difference, Power, and Equity
This course is not offered in the current catalog

In this course students will explore the intersections of environmental history and the history of colonialism in the United States. We will examine how scholars have crafted narratives that focus on “nature”–both as a cultural concept and as a set of biological processes and systems. Readings and assignments will analyze the ways in which these different “natures” have acted as both agents and objects of historical change. We will pay particular attention to how different environments were impacted by the Euro-American conquest of indigenous homelands. Course topics will include (but are not limited to) European settlement in New England, the North American fur trade, US continental expansion and the destruction of the bison, the transcontinental railroad, the creation of the National Park system, Native American environmental activism, and paramilitary responses to struggles over natural resources (such as the Dakota Access Pipeline protests).