Taking a global and comparative approach, the course will examine a series of crucial environmental transformations which have occurred over the course of human history, from agriculture and deforestation in prehistory and classical antiquity to the Columbian encounter, from problems of environmental management in imperial India to the emergence of environmentalism as a global movement today. Key themes of the course will include the ways in which human beings have thought about the environment and the ways in which humans have shaped the environment. It would be impossible to "cover" all of the vast chronological and geographical expanse of world history in a single course; instead, to allow a bit more depth, the course will focus on examples from several regions, including the Mediterranean, the Caribbean, New England/Long Island, and South Asia.

In terms of how the students will interact with Wikipedia: this is the first time I'll have taught using Wikipedia (if my application gets accepted), so I'm not 100% sure yet how everything will work, but I think I'll encourage students to try to find either articles that need work, or articles that don't exist yet, on either people, places or events in New England/New York/Long Island (the area the campus is located in) or people, places or events related to environmentalism/environmental history. (As a member of the American Society for Environmental History, I'm aware of various initiatives to try to further diversify Wikipedia entries related to environmental history--I saw a great spreadsheet just last year of people/books etc. that members thought really needed Wikipedia entries, & I will try to find the link to that spreadsheet and use it as a resource to try to match students with relevant topics, if they're having difficulty finding appropriate topics.) I'm excited about possibly making Wikipedia even richer in this regard! (I've been assigning research papers for this course forever, and my sense is that students are bored of research papers, and might really like the chance to do something which might actually make more of a difference in the world!)