Teaching

Courses Offered

First-Year Seminar on Histories of Health and the Environment
What is the relationship between health and the environment in human history? How have humans shaped the physical environment, and how have environmental conditions affected human health and well-being? This seminar explores these questions from a historical perspective. We’ll focus on the history of environmental change in North America in the late eighteenth century though the twentieth century, considering historical processes in a global, comparative framework. We will examine the intersection of histories of the environment, health, and disease, with an emphasis on the reciprocal relationship between ecological change and human health outcomes. Human-induced ecological transformations shaped patterns of health and disease, manifested in a multitude of dimensions, influencing cultural, social, economic, and geopolitical developments. In this course, we’ll study the history of anthropogenic environmental impacts alongside non-human, biological processes.

Colonial North America and US History Before 1890 (Hist 025)
A critical, analytical, and topical introduction to colonial North American and US history, employing a variety of primary sources and secondary scholarship. Intended for students who may already have taken US history in high school (including AP US history). Among the topics to be considered are encounters between Native Americans and European settlers; African and Afro-American slavery and antislavery; environmental transformation; industrialization and industrial capitalism; territorial expansion and US imperialism; immigration; race and gender relations; the socio-political causes of the Civil War; the events of Reconstruction; and wilderness preservation.

Disease and Disasters in North American History (Hist 065)
This course examines the history of humans and disease outbreaks in North America, framed alongside other “natural disasters” such as hurricanes, earthquakes, droughts, floods, fires, and famines in the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries. It approaches North American history from a global perspective, with an emphasis on transnational processes and world historical patterns. We will study the history of disease epidemics, the emergence of endemic diseases, and responses, alongside the historical context of colonization, slavery, imperialism, and globalization. The course emphasizes social, cultural, and environmental approaches to the history of disease, and assesses the historical impact of medical practice, institutions, and public health efforts in producing knowledge and policing behavior. We will approach these topics with critical perspectives that address contemporary issues of environmental justice and medical racism. Specific topics include infectious disease in the Columbian Exchange, medical racism, and the history of modern public health interventions. This course includes a study of the epidemiological history of diseases including smallpox, malaria, yellow fever, cholera, and influenza.

North American Agriculture (Hist 059)
This course examines the history of food cultivation and agricultural development in North America and the United States from a global perspective, with a focus on the ecological and health impacts of food production and consumption. We will study topics including pre-colonial histories of Indigenous land use and food production in diverse geographical contexts; European colonial agriculture and the establishment of plantation slavery; the rise of industrial/chemical agriculture and rural transformation in the United States; and the role of the United States in transforming global food systems.

History of Food and Agriculture (Hist 060)
This introductory course examines the subject of food cultivation, production, preparation, and consumption from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. It approaches the history of food and agriculture in a global framework and covers a broad time period ranging from the Paleolithic era through ancient, medieval, pre-industrial, and modern periods. The course covers topics including the emergence of cooking and food cultivation; agricultural revolutions; pastoral nomadism; the transmission of food cultures; plantation agriculture; the industrialization of food systems; drought and famine; the relationship between diets, health, disease, and the environment; and issues of ecology, sustainability, and food justice.

History of New Orleans (Hist 150)
The study of New Orleans brings together many critical issues in social, cultural, and environmental history. From its beginnings as a crescent-shaped section of rare high ground used seasonally by Indigenous Americans, the site of New Orleans serves as a focus to analyze local experiences with processes of European colonization, African American slavery, migration, urbanization, epidemic disease, industrialization, environmental catastrophe, and climate change. The course emphasizes issues of social and environmental justice by critically examining the city’s history of racism, inequality, and ecological vulnerability.

Ecological History (Hist 158)
This interdisciplinary course examines the historical relationship between humans and the natural environment from a global perspective. We will explore broad themes including early human environmental impacts, the agricultural revolutions, the “collapse” of early civilizations, health and disease ecology, processes of deforestation and desertification, the transformation in energy regimes, the paradox of population growth, the rise of environmentalism and the conservation movement, and the crisis of modern agriculture and diet. We will engage with these topics through intensive reading, writing, and conversation.

Historical Epidemiology (Hist 162)
Historical Epidemiology is a research seminar that explores the changing relationship between humans and disease in world history. The seminar will examine broad topics such as the evolution of human diseases and those of domesticated animals, urbanization and disease, the creation of disease reservoirs and new disease environments, “childhood” epidemics and immunity, medical practice and the efficacy of interventions, the rise of public health and disease eradication programs, vaccines, the pharmaceutical industry, and contemporary (re)emerging diseases.