University of St Andrews

In the early twenty-first century, the fate of 'civilisation' seems caught between the inevitability of progress and the unavoidability of collapse. Increasingly, this fate has been tied to human interaction with the non-human natural world. This module offers helpful historical insight into the existential crises precipitated by human interaction with the natural world. But both history and evolution can be characterised as combinations of gradual and sudden change. Through the study of past environmental disasters, this module seeks to understand historical continuities and discontinuities. Bookended by the Lisbon earthquake of 1755 and Hurricane Katrina of 2005, the module explores the nature of 'natural' disasters; and the social and cultural factors that shaped and framed them. Moreover, it considers the ways in which an increasingly industrial, urban, and 'global' world may have generated distinctly 'modern' risks.

Module Catalogue

EH5101 Environmental Disasters: Crisis, Catastrophe, and Risk in the Modern World (1755 to Present) (20)

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