This class is a global techno-environmental history, with a special emphasis on the modern Middle East. We will interrogate the many ways in which the transformation of nature and transfer of technologies has rearranged political relations within and between states in the last two hundred years. We shall survey the social history of technology, of engineering, infrastructural developments, urbanization, and energy resources. Students in this course will learn how to do research through the lenses of environmental history and science and technology studies using the methods of microhistory.
History