ARAS 334 - Disaster: Scale, Reach, and Interaction in the Ancient Mediterranean

CR: 3
Prerequisite: One ARAS course. Can we better understand potentials for sustainable futures by exploring collapse in the past? This course explores a series of answers to such questions by investigating intersecting evidence of political, social, economic, and environmental unrest, probing the extent to which political and social shifts in Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, Rome, North Africa, and Britain were influenced by human interventions into the environment as well as by catastrophic natural events. Through case studies ranging from the environmental impacts of Roman mining practices to the social unrest following massive storm surges in the eastern Mediterranean, students will have the opportunity to consider the ways in which humans and their environments exist as a reciprocal system in both past and present. Offered alternate years. III.W, V.1, V.2