The Coming of the Age of the Anthropocene: Historical Approaches to Climate Change

Learning Outcomes

Knowledge and Understanding

Having successfully completed this module, you will be able to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of:

• The roles of scientists, politicians, and ordinary citizens in the shaping the interaction between societies and earth’s climate
• The history of human made climatic change
• Key primary sources illustrating aspects of climate change, the age of the Anthropocene, the politics of environmentalism, and the changing place of science in society
• How historical research relates to societal, political and economic impacts of climate change
• Key secondary sources in the history of climate change, the Anthropocene and environmental history

Transferable and Generic Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• participate effectively in discussions
• Develop skills in deploying historical research in a critical policy context
• develop your time-management skills

Subject Specific Intellectual and Research Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• structure your ideas and research findings into well-ordered presentations, policy briefs and essays
• analyse and critically evaluate a variety of textual, visual and material culture sources
• actively engage with the secondary literature on the history of the anthropogenic age

Through this course we will consider: what the role of climate change has had in human history; how our scientific understanding of climate change has evolved; how do ordinary people engage with and seek climate justice; and interrogate climate change and how this exacerbates issues and intersections between class, racial, and gender inequalities. In the light of what we know today about the importance of changing climates, to what degree should we make it at the heart of historical study? Is the anthropogenic impact on our climate, very recent or long term? How might that change our view of history? Is the study of history of any practical use given the scale of the challenge before us?

Most fundamentally this course asks: do historians have any responsibility to convey the urgency of the issue? Or in accounting for the true complexity of the socio-political challenge before humanity?

Indicative weekly topics

How do we know the climate is changing? An Historical Outline

Climate Change before the Industrial Revolution

Fossil Capitalism

The Great Acceleration

Dealing with Climate: Economic Dimensions

Dealing with Climate: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

Dealing with Climate: Technological Solutions (visit to NOCS)

Discourse of Climate denial

Global Inequalities: Environmentalism, Class Struggle, Indigenous peoples

Rethinking Anthropogenic and Historical Futures

Teaching methods include:

• lectures and seminars
• detailed examination, analysis and discussion of sources
• short presentations by students, group discussions including feedback from the tutor
• independent learning through directed and self-directed study

Lectures will provide you with a general overview and understanding of chronology, sources and key concepts. This will be consolidated through readings and seminar discussions of primary and secondary source material. Presentations and subsequent group discussion in seminars will help you to develop your own ideas about topics, to analyse a range of source material and to articulate a critical argument.

Throughout the module you will also engage in directed and self-directed study, for example through pre-seminar reading and through library research. The presentations (by you and your fellow students) and your reading will provide you with a broad overview of the secondary literature, using the bibliography provided at the start of the module. The discussion generated by these presentations will provide you with the opportunity to explore the relevant major historical debates on a weekly basis

Summative

This is how we’ll formally assess what you have learned in this module.

Referral

This is how we’ll assess you if you don’t meet the criteria to pass this module.

Repeat

An internal repeat is where you take all of your modules again, including any you passed. An external repeat is where you only re-take the modules you failed.