HHIS-299A: History of Extinction

Humans are in the midst of the sixth mass extinction - the first to be caused by human activity. Extinction has been viewed in changing ways over the past 200 years, and this course takes an interdisciplinary approach to learning about the extinction process -- primarily from a historical perspective, but coming up to the present day. Our focus will be on the extinction of biological entities (primarily animals and plants) and how our attitudes and perspectives have changed, but we will also touch briefly on other systems that have disappeared or are in danger of disappearing: languages, technologies, and habitats, and what is at stake.