Required: Primary Sources (c. 500)
Bacon, Francis. “New Atlantis”. Three Early Modern Utopias (Oxford World Classics). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. (38 pages)
The Bible, read Genesis, 1–11 and Gospel of Matthew 13–14 (12 pages)
Boccaccio, The Decameron (Penguin Classics). London, Penguin Books, 2003. Read the Introduction to the First Day. (20 pages)
Buffon, Georges-Louis Leclerc, le comte de. The Epochs of Nature. Translated and edited by Jan Zalasieicz, Anne-Sophie Milon, and Mateusz Zalaslewicz. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2018. Read the following chapters: To be specified.
Carson, Rachel. The silent spring (Penguin Modern Classics). London: Penguin, 2000. Read chapters 1, 2, 6, 8, 16, 17. (80 pages)
Crutzen, Paul J. “Geology of Mankind”. Nature vol. 415, no. 6867 (2002), 23. DOI:10.1038/415023a (2)
Dammann, Erik. The Future in Our Hands (Sted: Pergamon, 1979) (Read: Preface and Part 2) (50 pages)
Hippocratic Writings (Penguin Classics) London: Penguin, 1978. Read the following excerpt: "Air, Water, Places" (22 pages)
Isidore of Seville, On the Nature of Things (Translated Texts for Historians). Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2016. Read the following excerpts: chapters 9–11, 29–36, 38–40, 45, 48 (16 pages)
Rule of Benedict. Read the following excerpts: chaps 1, 33–40, 53, 55, 58–59, 66–67 (digitally available: http://www.documentacatholicaomnia.eu/03d/0480-0547,_Benedictus_Nursinus,_Regola,_EN.pdf)
Wallace-Wells, David. “When will the planet be too hot for humans? Much, much sooner than you imagine”. New York (10.7.2017). https://search.proquest.com/docview/1926054419?accountid=14699
Read one of the following three titles:
Humboldt, Alexander von. Personal Narrative of a Journey to the Equinoctial Regions of the New Continent (Penguin Classics). London: Penguin, 1995. Read the following chapters: 2, 6, 13, 15 (60)
Or: Darwin, Charles. Voyage of the Beagle (Penguin Classics). London: Penguin, 1989. Read the following excerpts: chapters 10, 11, 12, 19, 23 (70)
Or: The Portable Thoreau (Penguin Classics) London: Penguin, 2012. Read the following: “Natural History of Massachusetts, 1842”, “Walking, 1863” (63)
Required reading: Secondary sources: (c. 500)
Hamilton, Clive, Christophe Bonneiuil and Fran?ois Gemenne (eds), The Anthropocene and the Global Environmental Crisis: Rethinking modernity in a new epoch (London: Routledge, 2015. Read chapters 1–6, 8, 10 (100)
Horrell, David. The Bible and the Environment (Sted: Equinox, 2010). (Read: chapters 1, 3–4 and 10–11) (47)
Mauelshagen, Franz. "Climate as a Scientific Paradigm: Early History of Climatology to 1800". In: The Palgrave Handbook of Climate History, edited by Sam White, Christian Pfister, Franz Mauelshagen, pp. 565–588 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018). (Available digitally through Oria.) (14)
Merchant, Carolyn. The Death of Nature. Women, Ecology and the Scientific Revolution. New York: HarperCollins, 1989. Read chapters 1, 4, 7–9 (130)
Ward-Perkins, Bryan. The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization (Oxford University Press, 2005), chapter 7: pp. 138-168 (20) (copy available in Canvas)
Worster, David. Nature's Economy: A History of Ecological Ideas. 2nd edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994 or later. Read chapters 1–2, 4, 7–8, 14–15, and pages 342–359 and 420–435 in chapters 16–17 (190)
Recommended reading: Useful contextual and historical overview
Collingwood, R. G. “Introduction”, in The Idea of Nature, pp. 1–27. New York: Oxford University Press, 1945. (27 pages)
Glacken, Clarence J. Traces on the Rhodian Shore: Nature and Culture in Western Thought from Ancient Times to the End of the Eighteenth Century. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967. Chapters 2, 4, 7, 9, 14 (200)
Oelschlager, Max. The idea of wilderness. New Haven. Yale University Press, 1991. Read chapter 1–3 (95)
Opie, John. “Renaissance Origins of the Environmental Crisis”. Environmental Review: ER, vol. 11, no. 1 (1987), pp. 2–17. (digitally available through Oria)
White Jr., Lynn. “The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis”. Science. New Series. Vol. 1555, no. 3767 (1967), pp. 1203–1207. (5) (digitally available through Oria)
Required reading: Theoretical approaches (IDE4091 only)
Chakrabarty, Dipesh. “The Climate of History: Four Theses”. Critical Inquiry 35 (2009), pp. 197–222. (Digitally available)
Chakrabarty, Dipesh. “The Planet: An Emergent Humanist Category”. Critical Inquiry 46 (2019), pp. 1–31. (Digitally available)
Evernden, Neil. The Social Creation of Nature (Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 1992). Read chapter 3–4. (33)