The Plastic Age
HIST 184
Subject & Catalog Number
Course Information
Description
Synthetic materials—plastics, polyester, synthetic rubber—represent both technological marvels and environmental evils of the modern age. This course takes a global view of the rise of synthetics from the mid-nineteenth through the twenty-first century. Moving beyond a simple narrative of transition from natural to synthetic materials, we will explore how distinctions between “natural” and “synthetic” tell broader stories of empires and colonies, extraction and political economy, the business of war, the petroleum industry’s rise, and the global environment crisis. This course asks how our heavy reliance on synthetics has remade the world technologically, environmentally, and politically—and whether alternatives might exist.
Course Notes
This course meets the "Beyond North America" History Concentration requirement.
Available for Harvard Cross Registration
