GEOG 286 - Energy and Nature

Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)

(Same as STS 286) This course explores how modes of energy production and ideas about nature have influenced one another. We begin with the emergence of Europe and the United States as industrial powers in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and we explore how different ideologies of nature emerged and facilitated industrialization. We then consider ways the U.S. rise to global power involved the manufacturing of new landscapes through water projects such as Hoover Dam and Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). Finally, we analyze the contemporary period of conservationism and globalization, including the expansion of renewable energies, dam removals, and the construction of massive energy projects in emerging economies. To understand the ways concepts of nature have changed, we also examine how engineers, politicians, tourists, community members, and indigenous groups have approached these projects differently and helped to forge new ideologies of nature as a space for energy production.

Prerequisite(s): one 100-level Geography course, or permission of the instructor.

Two 75-minute periods.