Climate - HIS00221H

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Module summary

From Greenpeace in the 1970s to the School Strikes for Climate in the 2020s, environmental activists have been raising concerns about the human planet, demanding actions against climate heating. Responding to urgent debates about how to prevent the worse effects of climate change and to mitigate its inevitable adverse consequences, this module traces the impact of human activities across late medieval, early modern and modern periods, explaining how human growth interacted with changes to the planet’s climate. The module’s trajectory takes you through the history of farming (a first energy revolution) through a second energy revolution (the burning of fossil fuels) into the so-called ‘great acceleration’ of the twentieth century; as it does so, it interweaves stories of resistance to these transitions of eco-systems by drawing on the history of indigenous people and on urban movements for environmental justice.

Case studies from Africa, the Americas, Asia and Europe also allows for common and contrasting planetary shifts to be discussed: how, for example, did the Little Ice Age lead to conflict in some places and not others; why did some societies (such as the Japanese of the Tokugawan period) pull back from the brink of environmental destruction (as signalled by rising rates of deforestation) whereas other societies (such as the inhabitants of Easter Island, and the North American pastoral communities) experience ‘collapse’; and why, when scientific knowledge was universally available in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, did so few societies mitigate the adverse effects of air and water pollution and soil erosion? On this journey into environmental pasts, you will encounter trailblazing texts and non-conventional historical sources on the human impact on the climate and vice versa.

Module will run

Occurrence	Teaching period
A	Semester 2 2025-26

Module aims

The aims of this module are:

• To introduce students to the practice of comparative history;
• To enable students to acquire skills and understanding of that practice by studying a particular topic or theme; and
• To enable students to reflect on the possibilities and difficulties involved in comparative history

Module learning outcomes

Students who complete this module successfully will:

• Grasp the key approaches and challenges involved in comparative history;
• Understand a range of aspects of the topic or theme which they have studied;
• Be able to use and evaluate comparative approaches to that topic or theme; and
• Have learned to discuss and write about comparative history

Module content

Students will attend a 1-hour briefing in week 1, then a 1-hour workshop and a 2-hour seminar in each of weeks 2-4, 6-8 and 10-11 of the semester. Weeks 5 & 9 are Reading and Writing Weeks (RAW). Students prepare for and participate in eight 1-hour workshops and eight 2-hour seminars in all.

Seminar topics are subject to variation, but are likely to include the following:

1. Fossil-fuel Economies
2. Climate-Weather Nexus
3. Myth and Denials
4. Societal Collapses
5. Storm Damage
6. No more Soil
7. Forests Forever
8. Water Injustice

Indicative assessment

Task	% of module mark
Online Exam -less than 24hrs (Centrally scheduled)	100.0

Special assessment rules

None

Additional assessment information

For formative assessment work, students will produce an essay plan relating to the themes and issues of the module.

For summative assessment students will complete an Open Exam in the assessment period.

Indicative reassessment

Task	% of module mark
Online Exam -less than 24hrs (Centrally scheduled)	100.0

Module feedback

Following their formative assessment task, students will receive written feedback, which may be supplemented by the tutor giving some oral feedback to the whole group. All students are encouraged, if they wish, to discuss their feedback during their tutor’s student hours. For more information, see the Statement on Feedback.

For the summative assessment task, students will receive their provisional mark and written feedback within 25 working days of the submission. For semester 1 assessments, the tutor will be available during student hours of the following semester for follow-up guidance if required. For more information, see the Statement of Assessment.

Indicative reading

For semester time reading, please refer to the module VLE site. Before the course starts, we encourage you to look at the following items of preliminary reading:

• Benjamin Lieberman and Elizabeth Gordon, Climate Change in Human History: Prehistory to the Present (Bloomsbury, 2024)
• Simon L. Lewis and Mark A, Maslin, The Human Planet: How We Created the Anthropocene (New Haven: Yale University press, 2018)
• Sunil Amrith, The Burning Earth. An Environmental History of the Last 500 Years (Penguin, 2024)