Course Information
History 391: Spring 1999
Class meets: Monday and Wednesday: 10:20-11:40
Location: McDonel, Room C102
Instructor Professor Susan Sleeper-Smith
E-mail: sleepers@pilot.msu.edu
Office Hours: Monday, 4:30-5:30
Office Phone: 355-6450; Main Office: 355-7500
Course Overview
This course presents a broad overview of the transformation in the
North American environment from the precontact period to the present. Our
goal is to explore the ways in which diverse people perceived and
organized the social, cultural, and economic aspects of their lives in
relation to the natural environment and how they then reshaped that
landscape based on socially constructed notions of nature and economic
motivation.
Together we will explore the influence of the environment on people
and people's influence on the environment. Hopefully, at the semester's
end you will be able to understand the history of how people dealt with
problems that affected both the lives of their fellow beings as well as
that of their natural landscape. This course does not focus on the history
of the environmental movement nor do I advocate any specific position.
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