ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY IN THE CONTEMPORARY AGE

The course aims to provide the basic tools (languages, skills, knowledge) to study the relationship between man and nature in a historical perspective. The twentieth century has led to a huge-scale quantitative leap in the process of exploitation of nature leading to a qualitative change and determining that local phenomena have become increasingly regional and global.

The course will take place through lectures. 10 hours of the course will be devoted to the seminar reading of passages selected from the texts of your choice.

The course covers the following topics:

1) The economic and population growth, the evolution of energy systems in the long term, with particular attention to the turn eight twentieth century.

2) The historical study of the relationship between humans and environmental media: soil, air, water (desertification, erosion, salinization, pollution, ozone depletion, climate change, acid rain, rivers, lakes seas: impoverishment, dams, deviations).

3) The relationship between humans and other life forms of the Earth (deforestation migration, biodiversity).

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.

For everyone

John R. MC Neil, Qualcosa di nuovo sotto il sole. Storia dell’ambiente nel secolo XX, Torino, Einaudi, 2000, 470 pp.

S. Adorno, I limiti del pianeta. Note e appunti sull’Antropocene, in Scalisi e Sanchez, Fra le mura della modernità, Roma, Viella 2019, pp. 351-365

G. Bonan, Gli storici e l’Antropocene: narrazioni periodizzazioni, dibattiti, in “Passato e Presente” 104, 2018, pp. 129-143.

A book chosen from the follwing

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

J. R. McNeil Peter Engelke, La grande accelerazione, una storia ambientale dell’Antropocene dopo il 1945, Einaudi 2018, (245 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).

All the books listed in the programs can be consulted in the Library.