Minnesota Master Naturalist

Course Registration

ADV - Environmental History

O’Shaughnessy Education Center, University of St. Thomas website

O’Shaughnessy Education Center, University of St. Thomas
St Paul, MN 55105

Please visit the Selim Center website for more information.

Historians are always developing new ways to understand the story of humanity, and Environmental History is one of the discipline’s most ground-breaking recent approaches. These lectures provide an introduction to this new field, explaining how attention to nature helps us understand people better. We will consider how natural processes like pre-modern climate change or animal behaviors have mattered to human societies, as well as how people have altered their environments, whether on farms or in cities. Combining these two approaches, we will conclude with what history looks like when humanity and nature are considered together, with environments always a part of the human story. Though attention to environmental change often highlights problems, it also celebrates expansive visions of justice and stewardship, as people and nature can only flourish together.

Series Information: Tuesdays, April 22-May 6, 2025, 10:00-11:45 a.m., O'Shaughnessy Educational Center Auditorium, UST St. Paul Campus, with a live Zoom simulcast also available. (No recordings are made or available; this is available as a live event, only.)

Series Instructor: William Cavert is an award-winning environmental historian, whose research expertise focuses on coal burning, air pollution, climate change, and vermin hunting in Britain from 1500-1800. He earned his Ph.D. from Northwestern University and has held a post-doctoral fellowship at Cambridge University and a Fulbright Fellowship at Sheffield University, in the UK. At St. Thomas he teaches an introductory Environmental History course and a research seminar on Natural Disasters in History, as well as courses on global history and Europe from 1400-1800.

Pre-registration required - Registration Link . The program costs $75/person.

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