Hist 5007: Canadian History

This course will explore Canadian history through Canadian environmental history. More specifically, we
will engage in the particular project of asking whether a distinctive Canadian environmental history exists -
or needs to exist. Like other recent trans-national approaches, environmental history's focus on the
relationship between humans on the one hand, and land, waters, and animals on the other, suggests the
irrelevancy of the national approach. Yet the Canadian state and national culture played an important role
in shaping the human relationship with nature in the northern part of North America . Thus, some have
argued that certain aspects of the tradition of history writing in Canada have shaped, or should shape,
Canadian environmental history scholarship. Others have concerned themselves with the contribution of
environmental history to the wider historical discussion. Is it just a niche study for single-issue green
scholars, or does the field have something to say to Canadian history more generally?

Students (and the instructor) will consider these questions by reading broadly across Canadian and U.S.
environmental history, considering current works in the light of older work in the Canadian staples,
political economy, and historical geographical traditions; taking up specific problems of the relationship
between Canadian and American environmental history; and finally by considering how environmental
history challenges us to revise older approaches to the Canadian past.