Infusing the Tale of the Environment into the World History Classrooms: Challenges and Expectations

The challenge of declining enrollments in survey-level history courses has encouraged many faculty to explore multiple ways in which undergraduate students can experience the benefits of historical study. The History Department at Minnesota State University, Mankato, is not alone in seeing precipitous declines in survey-level enrollments. In response, the faculty have made several efforts to improve history teaching while increasing access to historical thinking. Exploring the environmental history approach is one of these efforts. This paper examines a shift which integrates environmental history into two survey-level premodern world history courses: “European History to 1648” and “Introduction to Traditional East Asian Civilizations.” The case studies in the paper will provide examples of how two neophytes in the history of the environment adapted their course learning outcomes to engage their students in different and new ways. While the experiment is in its early stages and any results would be preliminary at best, the presentation is designed to foster further discussion among historians about the current challenges of survey-level courses and the benefits of having students consider the importance of human interaction with the environment to the formation and evolution of past societies.