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    Overview

    Historical overview of environmental impacts and human expectations from the first settlement of Aotearoa to the present.

    ENVI 211 examines the environmental history of New Zealand, with specific focus on the interaction between humans and their environment that has occurred since the arrival of humans about 800 years ago. As one of the last land masses to be settled by humans, and with endemic flora and fauna long isolated from evolutionary trajectories elsewhere, Aotearoa New Zealand is as an outstanding "laboratory" of environmental interaction. With two main pulses of settlement, it offers unique opportunities for comparative studies of human modifications of the environment and human responses to such change. Here we embed both colonial and indigenous perspectives of the environment, and how our shifting gaze and values of "nature" have changed over time, and how these ideals are codified in law. We are concerned with understanding human attitudes to their natural surroundings, human modifications of this environment, and human responses to these changes.

    About this paper

    Paper title Environmental History of New Zealand
    Subject Environment and Society
    EFTS 0.15
    Points 18 points
    Teaching period Semester 2 (On campus)
    Domestic Tuition Fees ( NZD ) $981.75
    International Tuition Fees Tuition Fees for international students are elsewhere on this website.
    Prerequisite
    54 points
    Schedule C
    Arts and Music, Science
    Contact

    geography@otago.ac.nz

    Teaching staff

    Course Co-ordinator:  To be advised

    Paper Structure

    This paper comprises of two 50-minute lectures each week supported by one 50-minute tutorial every other week.

    Assessment includes short exercises related to tutorials and a research essay.

    Textbooks

    Recommended: Eric Pawson and Tom Brooking (eds), Making a New Land: Environmental Histories of New Zealand, New Edition (Dunedin: Otago University Press, 2013).

    In addition, course materials will be made available electronically.

    Graduate Attributes Emphasised
    Global perspective, Interdisciplinary perspective, Scholarship, Communication, Critical thinking.
    View more information about Otago's graduate attributes.
    Learning Outcomes

    By the end of the paper students will:

    • Have learnt about how perspectives of nature or the "natural world" and the place of humans have transformed over time
    • Have learnt about the complex reasons for the extent and speed of the transformation of Aotearoa New Zealand through the decline of indigenous forests, wetlands, and tussock grasslands and the remaking of the landscape to and industrialised "ideal" embedded by English colonialism
    • Critically reflect on how environmental legacies persist in contemporary environmental management in Aotearoa New Zealand

    Timetable

    Semester 2

    Location
    Dunedin
    Teaching method
    This paper is taught On Campus
    Learning management system
    Blackboard

    Lecture

    Stream Days Times Weeks
    Attend
    A1 Tuesday 12:00-12:50 29-35, 37-42
    Wednesday 12:00-12:50 29-35, 37-42

    Tutorial

    Stream Days Times Weeks
    Attend one stream from
    A1 Monday 10:00-10:50 30, 32, 34-35, 38, 40-41
    A2 Monday 11:00-11:50 30, 32, 34-35, 38, 40-41
    A5 Tuesday 10:00-10:50 30, 32, 34-35, 38, 40-41
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