HIAF Courses

For the most updated list of courses offered and more information including course times, locations, and enrollments, please see SIS or Lou's List. Faculty information can be viewed in the Faculty Directory.

HIAF 3112: African Environmental History

La Fleur

Course Topic:

This course explores how Africans changed their interactions with the physical environments they inhabited and how the landscapes they helped create in turn shaped human history. Topics covered include the ancient agricultural revolution, the “Columbian exchange” of plants and animals amid slave trading, colonial-era mining and commodity farming, the invention of 20th-century wildlife “conservation,” and the emergent challenges of land ownership, infectious disease, and climate change. These are expansive stories and ones varied and distinctive on the most local scale, so we will develop broad, interpretative themes to understand the sort of case studies we will be engaging. The course’s focus is on Africa, but the issues are global and comparative. Therefore, course learning about History as a discipline and Environmental History as a specialized subfield is applicable to other intellectual endeavors and active citizenship. Specific requirements include homework and participation (15% of course grade), four low-stress map exercises (10%), and three exams (25%, 25%, 25%) comprised of a mix of short-answer identification items and your choice among several pre-circulated essay prompts.