Course Details

This is an interdisciplinary environmental history course which examines the intersection of the physical landscape and natural resources of the Salish Sea region, with the various people and cultures that have existed on the landscape through time. Working with a variety of texts, both non-fiction and fiction, paintings, historical documents, and guest lectures, we will pay special attention to the history and experience of marginalized cultures, and the relationship of these cultures with the land and its resources through time. Much of the course will necessarily focus on Native American cultures, past and present, but we will also explore, for example, the African American experience in Seattle, and effects of ongoing gentrification in Seattle’s neighborhoods. Literature on the development of western European environmental philosophy, will also provide crucial context to our discussions. Through an individual writing project and a collaborative media project, we will seek to give voice to forgotten and marginalized peoples, and associated spaces, on the greater Seattle landscape.