Fall 2025 | MWF | 10:10 – 11:00AM | Professor Sarah T. Phillips
Fall 2025 – Sarah T. Phillips
| Day | Start | Stop | Bld | Room |
| MWF | 10:10AM | 11:00AM |
When have Americans addressed declining resources and environmental deterioration? Why hasn’t every problem provoked a policy response? This course surveys how Americans perceived, developed, and governed the country’s natural and ecological resources from its beginning to the present. Effective Fall 2019, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Social Inquiry I, The Individual in Community.
BU Hub Areas (Effective Spring 2021): Social Inquiry I, The Individual in Community
Additional Course Materials
Extended course description: We will survey how Americans perceived, developed, and governed the country’s natural and ecological resources from its beginning to the present. The course will explore how debates over resource distribution and environmental hazards have shaped American politics and government, and how the rewards and risks of environmental management have fallen unequally along lines of socio-economic class, race, and gender. Students will grasp how the political frameworks, institutional arrangements, legal strategies, and cultural assumptions of the past have shaped present problems, structured present choices, and formed their own environmental values. They will know at which points in history Americans have addressed declining resources and environmental deterioration, and why not every problem has provoked a policy response.
Sample syllabi: HI 291 Syllabus Spring 2021
