Industryscapes: Socio-natural Sites of R

From about 1400, Europe saw very rapid expansion of industries such as shipbuilding, mining, wood extraction and transport. These industries have mainly been studied by economic and technology historians along a short timeline of boom, outputs, and decline. In contrast, this course aims to introduce and investigate natural, social, cultural, and material ecologies of these industries over the long term to track change over time in relationships between humans and the environment. The course will introduce students to the concepts and methods of describing and analyzing socio-natural sites, to recent research and conceptualization of “extraction,” “resource,” and consider attitudes to the natural world foreclosed by European colonial extraction.