Environment and Empire

Course description:

This module examines how environmental challenges have been, and continue to be, shaped by empire. These impacts affect how Earth's history, the biosphere, and the climate are known, and extend to both extractive technologies and financial relationships that enable extraction. But the effects of empire run deeper, to the very way the environment is understood. Using London as a launchpad for field trips and firsthand encounters, this module challenges students to rethink how ideas of the planet’s past, present, and future are shaped by empire.

This module aims to:

1) Examine how empire has shaped, and continues to shape, environmental knowledge

2) Explore sites and spaces of empire, such as where the material markers of scientific knowledge persist in advancing ways of knowing and relating to the environment today

3) Understand how contemporary modes of extraction maintain links to the legacies of empire, such as in and through financial activities

4) Provide students with concrete analytical skills for situating contemporary challenges in historical context

5) Encourage students to engage critically and thoughtfully with how environmental thought, and baselines for assessing environmental impacts, have been influenced by the data collected through empire