Kursöversikt

 Course description

190 million: according to the World Bank, this is the number of people who lived in a country different from their homeland in 2005. This fact calls for a better understanding of the history of migration and its relation with nature. In this course we will explore the environmental history of mass migrations. We will follow the paths of migrants who came to the New Worlds with their ideas about nature, their ways of using natural resources, and their bodies, that is, with their individual resistance or weakness toward environmental challenges. We will examine the heritage that migrants inscribed in the landscape as well the marks left by nature in their bodies and culture. And we will explore how ethnic/racial segregation and power relationships have produced an urban landscape deeply marked by the social experiences of immigrants.

Final assignment

The students asked to write an entry for the Atlas (called geoarchive Links to an external site.) of the CLISEL project. Geo-archive is an open-access tool containing historical cases of interactions between migration and environmental/climatic changes. It encompasses information on the description of the case, policy responses to migration and loss & damage, and reflections of this case in the literary/audio-visual productions. The tool is mainly designed for teaching and outreach purposes as well as for providing locally grounded examples for local authorities and climate/migration policy stakeholders.

The entry should cover a case of environmentally induced migration, it should be more or less 2000 words long (not less than 1500, not more than 2500). It should follow the template that we will provide you. The entry must be discussed with Marco or Roberta. Please, do not write your case without discussing it with us in advance, otherwise, it might be rejected. The students must present their entries to the class with a proper presentation (powerpoint or similar). More instructions will be given during the course.

Here you have two suggestions and attached you find the template and samples 1 and 2 of Atlas entry.

Assignment Evaluation

Students will be evaluated for: their participation in the classes (25%), final assignment (50%),  weekly assignments (25%).

Participation in the classes

Students are supposed to come to all classes having read the readings and done the weekly assignments on time. If someone must miss a class, she or he is supposed to inform the instructors. One absence is fine; two absences will require extra homework. More the two must be negotiated.

Instructors:

Roberta Biasillo roberta.biasillo@abe.kth.se (main instructor and coordinator of the course)

Marco Armiero armiero@kth.se

Erik Isberg erik.isberg@abe.kth.se

Daniele Valisena valisena@kth.se

For the readings:

1. You can email us and we will provide an electronic version of the readings
2. You can visit the Environmental Humanities Laboratory and make a copy of the readings, but you must book an appointment with one of the instructors in the team (Teknikringen 74D, level 5)
3. You can buy the main textbook: M. Armiero and R. Tucker, Environmental History of Modern Migrations (Routledge 2017)

For the assignments:

Please submit them through CANVAS the day before the class.

Schedule

Schedule	Room	Themes	readings
16/03 - 13-15	L44	Introduction to the course. What is history, what is the environment	E.H. Carr, What is history? Penguin Books, 1990, pp.7-30. Book available on line at this link Links to an external site.. Sverker Sörlin and Paul Warde, Making the Environment Historical – An Introduction, in S. Sörlin, Nature’s End, 1-19.
19/03 - 13-15	L44	How to do environmental history	Worster, Donald. "Appendix: doing environmental history." The Ends of the Earth: Perspectives on Modern Environmental History (1988): 289-307.
23/03 - 13-15	L44	Environmental history of modern migration	M. Armiero and R. Tucker, Introduction, migrants in environmental history, in Environmental history of Modern Migrations (2017): 1-16.
26/03 - 13-15	L44	Tools and methods	Rutherford, Stephanie. “A Resounding Success? Howling as a Source of Environmental History.” in Methodological Challenges in Nature-Culture and Environmental History Research. Jocelyn Thorpe, Stephanie Rutherford, and L. Anders Sandberg, eds. Routledge, 2016: 43-54. Thorpe, Jocelyn. "It Matters Where You Begin. A (continuing) Journey Towards Decolonizing Research."  in Methodological Challenges in Nature-Culture and Environmental History Research. Jocelyn Thorpe, Stephanie Rutherford, and L. Anders Sandberg, eds. Routledge, 2016: 130-143.
30/03 - 13-15	L44	Mobility in imperial settings	Crosby, Alfred W. "Ecological Imperialism: The Overseas Migration of Western Europeans as a Biological Phenomenon." In The Ends of the Earth: Perspectives on Modern Environmental History, edited by Donald Worster, 103-17. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. WILLIAM BEINART and KAREN MIDDLETON, Plant Transfers in Historical Perspective: A Review Article, Environment and History, Vol. 10, No. 1 (February 2004), pp. 3-29.
02/04 - 13-15	L44	Source Analysis for Environmental Historians	Watch the the director's cut of the movie "In the Shadow of Ebola Links to an external site." by environmental historian Gregg Mitman (among others) and explore the website Links to an external site..
06/4 - 13-15	L44	Migration and Climate (Change)	Chris Methmann & Delf Rothe (2014) Tracing the spectre that haunts Europe: the visual construction of climate-induced migration in the MENA region, Critical Studies on Security, 2:2, 162-179. Mike Davis, "The Poor Eat Their Homes', in: M. Davis, Late Victorian Holocausts. El Nino Famines and the Making of the Third World, Verso, New York, 2002, 61-90.
09/04 - 13-15	L44	Digital humanities projects
16/04 - 15.00-16.30	online	COVID-19, climate change and migration	The event will be run using Youtube livestreaming platform. Shortly before the event please join using this link:  https://youtu.be/uKFeaTGmSok Links to an external site.
20/04 - 13-15	L44	Internal migration in Brazil due to the drought	Angus Wright, Environmental degradation as a cause of migration: precautionary tales from Brazil,  n Environmental history of Modern Migrations (2017):159-176
23/04	L44	Italian miners in Belgium	Daniele Valisena and Marco Armiero, Coal Lives: body, work and memory among Italian miners in Wallonia, Belgium, n Environmental history of Modern Migrations (2017): 88-108
27/04 - 13-15	Division of History	Individual feedback on the final assignment	Please book your time slot here: https://doodle.com/poll/rvz885844n3xyz6i Links to an external site. If you could not book a time slot, email biasillo@kth.se
04/05 - 13-15	L44	Individual feedback on the final assignment	Please book your time slot here: https://doodle.com/poll/rvz885844n3xyz6i Links to an external site. If you could not book a time slot, email biasillo@kth.se

Assignments