Anthropocene and Environmental History

The aim of the workshop is to provide students with an overview of the basic features of the Anthropocene as a geo-biophysical marker indexing anthropogenic transformation of the Earth. The workshop combines the study of environmental transformation and climate history with the history of geological and economic transformation, highlighting the interrelationships between these processes. It also aims to provide adequate skills to understand that the Anthropocene is not merely a scientific concern, but also affects the political, social, economic, and juridical dimensions of human and non-human life on this planet.

By the end of the course, students should be able to recognize that a new perspective is needed to study the dynamics that have led to the current planetary condition, including innovative multi-temporal and multi-scalar approaches. Students should also be able to understand, critically analyze, and explain how studying the Anthropocene opens new lines of inquiry into some of the basic tenets of history, including chronology (deep time versus recorded human time), archives (traditional archives versus the Earth's crust), and scale (region versus the planet).