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 an 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 according to which, local phenomena started to have regional and global impacts.

The course covers the following topics:

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

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

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

4) The role of cities, fuels, technologies, ideas and politics as driving forces of the environmental changes.

The topics will eminently be presented in an historical global, national and local perspective.

Obligatory texts:

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

Gabriella Corona, Breve storia dell’ambiente in Italia, Bologna, il Mulino, 2015, 140 pp.

One text chosen from the following:

Salvatore Adorno, Simone Neri Serneri (a cura di), Industria, ambiente e territorio. Per una storia ambientale delle aree industriali in Italia, Bologna, il Mulino, 2009, 366 pp.

Carlo Carraro, Alessandra Mazzai, Il clima che cambia. Non solo un fatto ambientale, Il Mulino 2015, 208 pp.

Laura Scichilone, L’Europa e la sfida ecologica. Storia della politica ambientale europea (1969-1998). Il Mulino, 2008, 290 pp.