HY446 - Geo-Interventions: Transforming Nature, Space, and Territory in the Anthropocene 2024/25

How do we reconceive modern societies (since, roughly, the 18th century) as agents in an intervention into nature, landscape, and resources? While today’s consequences mostly affect the atmosphere, and are discussed as climate crisis, the roots of mankind making an indissoluble imprint on the planet has mostly been in what this course describes as call “geo-interventions”, and more directly: as projects of digging the soil, drilling the earth, redirecting the waters. This seminar will introduce M.A. students into the “Anthropocene perspective” in general, and discuss German developments from the 18th century to the present, in particular, albeit not be limited to Germany and Central Europe. Germany may be seen as an exemplary case for a modern society facing the challenge of the Anthropocene. Global approaches and case studies from other countries will be included, while the seminar also aims at a broad, interdisciplinary perspective that should be attractive not just for students of history, but of a variety of social sciences, too. The first semester will lay conceptual and empirical foundations, with a historical emphasis on the 19th century. In the second semester, the story will be continued for major problems of the 20th century and into the present, and with that, highlight political problems of governance and resistance. The seminar will cover themes such as the history of landscape, infrastructures, and earth interventions over many years.