New Course: MEDVL 491

We are offering a new course, MEDVL 491: Medieval (Preindustrial) Environmental and Climate History taught by our Associate Director, Andrew Moore.

This course introduces upper-year students to the major authors, works, and themes of preindustrial environmental and climate history. It demonstrates how interdisciplinary studies frame the historical interaction of culture and nature, and how they can help us to understand more fully the ecological history of our planet. Historians and medievalists seek increasingly to integrate established concepts and traditions with cutting-edge scientific methods, including genetics, pollen studies, dendrochronology, climate studies, and more. 

This course will challenge many preconceptions about medieval society and the ways that pre-modern peoples interacted with their environments. Contrary to popular belief, many pre-industrial societies adapted effectively to climatic changes, actively managed their landscapes, and often carried a significant ecological footprint. Medieval people, however, perceived of “nature” and their role in the world in fundamentally different ways than we do today. They had their own ideas about concepts like the order of the universe, nutrition, disease, and abundance. This course will survey many aspects of society in the Middle Ages to understand better how environments shaped people, and how people shaped their environments.

The locus of study is Western Europe, for the period between the end of Antiquity and the start of the Industrial Revolution. Each week, students will read assigned texts and discuss them in a seminar format. Ultimately, each student must write a final historiographical or research essay.

For MEDVL majors, this course can substitute for one HIST 450 course in their degree plan.