HIST 382: East Asian Environmental History

(1 Unit)
Prerequisite: Junior or senior standing or permission of instructor.
Investigates how people in China and Japan have thought about and interacted with their environment in different historical settings. Explores the way in which East Asian religions and philosophies explain the cosmos and the place of humans and non-humans within it, and the impact of imperialism, industrialization, and revolution on environmental thinking and policies during the nineteenth to the twenty-first centuries. Topics include Confucian views of stewardship, Daoist cosmology, Shinto ritual, feng shui, environment and disease, Communist state building and environmental exploitation, and industrial pollution. Staff.