Confessions of an Environmental Illiterate: Wandering at the Juncture of World History and Environmental Humanities

This presentation assesses the remedial state of environmental awareness in an existing world history program and addresses various steps made to improve the situation. As one part of the process, the world history program began to partner with the campus' Environmental Studies Program in an effort to enhance both fields, increasing environmental awareness in world history and expanding the world history presence in Environmental Studies courses. One focus of this presentation will be on the continued use and reinterpretation of pre-modern texts in modern contexts. Among these texts are the Epic of Gilgamesh, Euripides' The Bacchae, and the poetry of Han Shan (Cold Mountain) in China's T'ang Dynasty period.