History 356 - Thinking Mountains

Throughout the modern period the way people engaged with mountains reflected the currents of political and cultural thought. This course engages the history of human-mountain relations to think transnationally about major historiographical themes of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: modernity, nature, empire, class, nationalism, science, leisure, environmentalism, gender, climate change, and ideology. Following British tourists into the Alps and a German scientist into the Andes, we will leave the beaten track of history and find that mountains are "good to think with." Along the way students will conduct a research project and experience the joys and challenges of historical research.