HISTORY OF THE ENVIRONMENT IN CONTEMPORARY TIMES

The course aims to provide the basic tools (languages, skills, knowledge) to study the relationship between man and nature in a historical perspective. According to the Dublin descriptors, the achievement of the objectives of knowledge, application of knowledge, independent judgment, communication skills and learning skills will be declined within the specificity of environmental history, to allow students to orient themselves in the face of the current situation of the environmental transition with the scientific tools offered from the discipline. From this perspective, the caesura of 19th-20th-century contemporaneity is interpreted as an enormous leap in quantitative scale in the process of exploitation of nature which has led to a qualitative change, determining that local phenomena have progressively become regional and global.

The course covers the following topics:

4) The role of  cities, fuels, technologies, ideas and politics of environmental change as engines.

The topics will be addressed in key eminently historical global, national and local

A book chosen from the following

Christophe Bonneuil, Jean Baptiste Fressoz, La storia la terra e noi. L’evento Antropocene, Treccani 2019, (365 p.)

Wolfgang Behringer, Storia culturale del clima dall’era glaciale al riscaldamento globale, Torino, Bollati Boringhieri, 2010, (289 p.)

E. C. Ellis, Antropocene. Esiste un futuro per la terra dell’uomo? Firenze, Giunti, 2020, (220 p.) 

S.L. Lewis M. Maslin, Il pianeta umano. Come abbiamo creato l’Antropocene, Torino, Einaudi, 2018 (356 p)

Please remember that in compliance with art 171 L22.04.1941, n. 633 and its amendments, it is illegal to copy entire books or journals, only 15% of their content can be copied.

For further information on sanctions and regulations concerning photocopying please refer to the regulations on copyright (Linee Guida sulla Gestione dei Diritti d’Autore) provided by AIDRO - Associazione Italiana per i Diritti di Riproduzione delle opere dell’ingegno (the Italian Association on Copyright).