HIST2350 — Hunting, Gathering and Health
This course is unique in its joint appeal to students of history and student of biology, as well students from other related fields in the humanities and the sciences. Students will be exposed to cutting-edge research linking the study of early American history, American Indian history, the history of American ecology, modern nutritional science, and the development of immunity to disease. Students will be required to understand the ways in which published scientific data and research can inform historical case studies of the encounter between colonial Americans, American Indians, and European from the fifteenth century to the twentieth century and vice versa. Students will be introduced to contemporary debates on the relationship between nutritional science and human immunity, using the to understand the history of colonial American and American Indian health, farming, hunting, and ecology following European contact. These histories, in turn, will illuminate their reading of scientific papers and research.