Spring Courses 2010

Publication Date: Oct 8, 2009

HIST 4860 Environmental History of China

This course will explore the evolution of environmental thought,
policy-making and practice in Chinese history. It begins with
consideration of the foundational ideas about the environment and human
interaction with it in early Chinese philosophical traditions
(Confucianism and Daoism). It then examines patterns of human impact on
the environment and the effects of environmental change on human life.
Specific topics include the effects of changes in agricultural methods,
demographic growth, economic development, health and disease, and state
policies on human practice and on the land from medieval times to the
early modern era to the twentieth century, including the period of the
Maoist revolution and the post-Mao reform era. It will also examine
responses to environmental problems and changing attitudes toward the
relationship between people and the environment and toward the growing
environmental crisis in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.