History 4495 Darwin and Evolution: Biology as History
Instructor: Karl Ittmann
530 AH, 3-3102
Email: Kittmann@uh.edu
Office Hours W, Th 2-2:50pm
This course examines the relationship between the biology, environment and culture, which has
shaped human history. We will range from human origins to modern ideas of race in an effort to
not only reconstruct this biological and environmental history, but also examine how historians
and others have understood this relationship in the past century.
The course will be structured as a weekly seminar, with each student reading the assigned texts
and then participating in class discussion. Each student will also write a 15-25-research paper on
a topic relating to the themes of the seminar. Each student will submit a draft of his or her paper
in order to allow for a final revision and give a brief in class presentation of her or her work.
Book List
Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man
Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
Thomas Malthus, 1st Essay on Population
William McNeill, Plagues and People
Charles Redman, Human Impact on Ancient Environments
Grading: Class participation and in-class presentations 50%, 15-25-page research paper 50%
Final Draft of Paper Due December 15th
Class Schedule:
Week 1 August 27th Introduction
Week 2 September 3rd Biology and History
Carol Ward, “The Evolution of Human Origins,” American Anthropologist, 2003, 105, 1, 77-88
William McNeil, “The Biological Basis of Human History,” Perspectives in Biology and
Medicine, 46,3, (2003), 371-382
Donald Kelley, “The Rise of Prehistory,” Journal of World History, 14,1, 2003, 17-36.
Edmund Russell, “Evolutionary History: Prospects for a New Field,” Environmental History,
8,2, 2003, 204-228
Week 3 September 10th Malthus
1st Essay on Population (1798)
Frederick Whelen, “Population and Ideology in the Enlightenment,” History of Political
Thought, XII, 1, 37-72.
James Lee and Wang Feng, “Malthusian Models and Chinese Realities,” Population and
Development Review, 25,1, 33-65.
Week 4 September 17th Darwin-Social or Otherwise
Excerpts from Descent of Man
Carl Bajema, “Charles Darwin on Man in the First Edition of the Origin of the Species, History
of Biology, 21, 3 403-410.
Gregory Claeys, “The ‘Survival of the Fittest’ and the Origins of Social Darwinism”, Journal of
the History of Ideas, 61,2 223-240.
Ian Shaw, “’Of Plain Signification’: Darwin’s World in the First Edition of The Origin of the
Species,” University of Toronto Quarterly, 62, 356-374.
Week 5 September 24th The Origins of Modern Homo sapiens
Christopher Stringer African Exodus: The Origins of Modern Humanity
Julia Drell, “Neanderthals: A History of Interpretation,” Oxford Journal of Archeology, 19,1,
2000, 1-24
Week 6 October 1st Early Humans and Extinction
Charles Redman, Human Impact on Ancient Environments
Week 7 October 8th No class
Week 8 October 15th The Neolithic Revolution
Graeme Barker, “Approaches to Prehistoric Farming” in Barker, Prehistoric Farming in Europe,
1-27.
Margaret Conkley, “Original Narratives: The Political Economy of Gender in Archaeology” in
Gender at the Crossroads of Knowledge, 102-139.
Kevin Greene, “V. Gordon Childe and the vocabulary of revolutionary change,” Antiquity, 73,
97-109.
Bruce Trigger, “Alternative Archaeologies: Nationalist, Colonialist, Imperialist,” Man, 19,355370.
Week 9 October 22nd Disease and Human Populations
William McNeill, Plagues and People
Week 10 October 29th History as Biology
Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
James Blaut, “Environmentalism and Eurocentrism,” Geographical Review, 89,3, 1999, 391-408
Week 11 November 5th Race and Eugenics
Steven Jay Gould, The Mismeasure of Man
Week 12-Week 14 November12-26 Independent Work-meet with instructor
Week 15 December 3rd Last Day of class-presentations and drafts due