HIST46330: The Nature of History: Approaches to Environmental History

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• To explore comparative, transnational, and interdisciplinary approaches to historical topics.
• To develop concepts and methodologies that are applicable across different eras and region.
• To aid students in developing critical knowledge for engaging historical research and formulating independent analysis.

• Environmental history is one of the fastest-growing subfields of the historical profession. The fields objectivesto use the historians methods to examine intersections of humans and the ecospherecan be partly traced to the environmental awakening of the past half-century. Rising interest in the mutually constitutive relationship between humans and the environment has spurred new approaches to historical research. The objective of this module is to provide a thorough introduction to environmental history from a global perspective. It will examine the development of environmental history and explore some key debates within the field. As a team-taught course, individual seminars will be taught be a variety of regional specialists working on a wide range of historical periods and topics. They will each introduce key themes in environmental history that build upon their own research.

Subject-specific Knowledge:

• An understanding of environmental history as a historical subfield and methodological approach across temporal and regional scopes.
• A critical knowledge of the primary sources, research questions, and methodologies that inform environmental historiography.

Subject-specific Skills:

• Knowledge of and ability to critically analyse secondary and tertiary material regarding environmental history
• Ability to identify and critically interpret primary sources related to environmental history
• Facility with theories, themes, and methods relevant to the environmental history across different regions and periods
• Ability to use primary sources to make a targeted intervention in scholarly discourse regarding environmental history

Key Skills:

• Independent research skills, using a wide range of search tools and historical sources
• Advanced ability to synthesise complex material from a wide range of sources
• Ability to formulate complex arguments in articulate and well-structured English, observing the conventions of academic writing, conforming to high academic standards
• Effective oral and written communication
• Facility drawing together disparate forms of historical evidence
• Ability to demonstrate professional conduct through observation of professional and academic standards, including correct editorial referencing of sources
• Personal organisational skills, including time management

• Seminars will focus on a set of readings assigned by the tutor on their particular region, period, and specialism in environmental history. Seminars provide students with a forum in which to assess and comment critically on the findings of others, defend their conclusions in a reasoned setting, and advance their knowledge of environmental reading.
• Students will develop presentation skills, providing detailed presentations of materials in seminars. They will also research a particular area of local environmental history and present their findings in the field.
• Structured reading requires students to focus on set materials integral to the knowledge and understanding of the module. It specifically enables the acquisition of detailed knowledge and skills which will be discussed in other areas of the teaching and learning experience.
• Assessment is by means of a 5,000-word essay which requires the acquisition and application of advanced knowledge and understanding of environmental history. Essays require a sustained and coherent argument in defence of a hypothesis, and must be presented in a clearly written and structured form, and with appropriate apparatus.

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