This seminar explores the changing intellectual grounds on which ideas about natural environments were forged, from the 18th century to the present day. The readings interweave accounts of how some places were deemed "natural" and came to be objects of scientific study and political concern together with attention to landscapes as places of refuge and a basis for social transformation. The aim of the seminar is to introduce a series of conceptual tools for analyzing these meanings, across a range of times and places - after all, the meanings cultures invest in ideas like natural, global, or environmentalism are far from stable or singular.