Hist 5694/STS 5424: AMERICAN
ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY
CRN 16080/17121, Monday 2:00-4:50,
427 Major Williams
Spring 2007
|
Dr. Mark V. Barrow, Jr. Office: 433 Major Williams
(inside 431!) Phone 231-4099 (O); 552-5876 (H) Office Hours: M, T, W, 11-12
noon and by appt. URL:
http://www.history.vt.edu/Barrow/hist5694/ E-mail: barrow@vt.edu Listserv:
L16080_17121@listserv.vt.edu |
The idea of nature contains,
though often unnoticed, an extraordinary amount of human history. ÑRaymond Williams |
This graduate reading course is
designed to provide a broad introduction to the field of American environmental
history. Using approaches drawn
from anthropology, geography, the natural sciences, traditional history, and
other sources, environmental history seeks to illuminate how humans have
interacted with the natural world across time. More specifically, it explores the role of natureÑbroadly
construed to include climate, micro-organisms, water, wildlife, ecosystems,
etc.Ñin shaping human society, while documenting the tremendous impact humans
have had on the natural world as they have imported exotic species, extracted
resources, built structures, diverted waters, generated pollution, and
otherwise transformed the landscape. Environmental history also examines
differing perceptions of, ideas about, and values associated with the nonhuman
world and the effects of those conceptions on that world. Although scholars have long pursued
various forms of environmental determinism, only since the late 1960s and early
1970s have they begun to more systematically explore the complex (and, as it
turns out, reciprocal) relationship between nature and culture.
In making decisions about which
readings to include from the large body of literature produced in the three
decades since environmental history began to emerge as a self-conscious
sub-discipline of history, I have tried to strike a balance between a small
number of studies now generally regarded as classics (e.g., NashÕs Wilderness
and the American Mind and CrononÕs Changes
in the Land) and a much larger number of
more recent studies illustrating current trends in the field (e.g., a growing
interest in urban environments and attempts to begin introducing race, class,
and gender perspectives). At the
same time, I have sought to achieve broad chronological coverage and to pick
books that are considered Ògood reads.Ó
REQUIRED BOOKS:
á Mark Spence, Dispossessing the Wilderness: Indian Removal and the Making of National Parks (1999)
á Paul
Sutter, Driven Wild: How the Fight Against the Automobile Launched the
Wilderness Movement (2002)
á Donald
Worster, Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s (1979)
á Adam
Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside: Suburban Sprawl the Rise of American
Environmentalism (2001)
The required books are available
from the University Bookstore, Volume Two Bookstore, and the Tech Bookstore. They are also available at the reserve
desk at Newman Library or through various online booksellers (e.g., amazon.com,
bn.com, bookfinder.com, etc.). In
addition to the books listed above, I may occasionally pass out other short
readings, send them out to the listserv, or post them on the Web.
COURSE REQUIREMENTS:
1. Class participation. This is a reading- and discussion-based
course, so obviously full participation is critical to its success. Everyone is expected to attend each
scheduled class meeting, to carefully and critically read all assigned material
(including the questions posted by discussion anchors) before coming to class,
and to actively participate in our deliberations. In addition, students may be called on from time to time to
make brief presentations to the class.
2. Short Weekly Analytical Papers
(SWAPs). To sharpen writing
skills, help focus ideas, and facilitate discussion, each week each participant
will turn in a short (ca. 1 p., double spaced) analytical paper centered on the
reading for that week. Weekly
analytical papers may assess the strengths and weaknesses of the assigned
reading, respond to its major arguments, evaluate its thesis or use of
evidence, critically examine its theoretical and/or methodological frameworks,
relate it to other readings for the course (assigned or recommended), or
(preferably) some combination of these approaches. Simple summaries will not suffice; these papers must come to
terms with the significance of the reading. Regardless of the particular strategy adopted for doing
this, papers should also be concise, well written, carefully proofread, and
demonstrate a thorough command of the assigned reading. SWAPs will not receive an individual
letter grade (I use a less-formal check/check+/ check- evaluation system), but
they will count toward the participation component of your final grade. We may also occasionally do peer
evaluations of SWAPs.
3. Discussion Anchors. Each week one or two volunteers
(depending on the final size of the class) will be responsible for leading
class discussion. Discussion
anchors are expected to be especially familiar with the reading for the week,
to compose a brief set of questions to help guide our discussions, and to
locate and share a minimum of four published book reviews of the reading
assignment. Discussion anchors
must post a set of broad discussion questions (which should be jointly
constructed when there are two anchors) on the class listserv no later than twenty-four
hours before class (you will have to use your Virginia Tech e-mail account to
submit items to the class listserv).
During class they will not only lead discussion, but also be available
to answer questions, share resources, and summarize major arguments of the
reading. No formal presentation is
necessary, but discussion anchors may provide a brief introduction to the
discussion if they are so inclined.
4. Short Papers. Each student will write four short
papers (3-4 pp., double-spaced, ca. 750-1000 words each), one for each of the
four units we will be covering this semester. These will be due in class on the day we finish that
unit. The specific topics
will be assigned the week before they are due and will generally involve
writing a critical/comparative review of two or more of the assigned readings
from that unit. On days when
short papers are due, no one needs to write a weekly analytical paper, but
discussion anchors should still submit a list of discussion questions to the
class listserv. Late papers may be
penalized by having points deducted from them.
5. Essay Review. The final writing assignment is a
longer (ca. 6-8 pp.) critical essay review of a recent book on modern American
environmentalism, chosen in consultation with the instructor. The review should not only assess the
strengths and weaknesses of the book in question, but it should also properly
ÒplaceÓ it in the historiography.
In preparation for the essay review (and so we can all learn more about
recent scholarship in the field), on the last day of class each student will
make a short presentation on their book.
The final assignment is due on Thursday, May 3, by 5:00 p.m.
GRADES:
The final grade for the course
will be based on the following formula:
¥Participation
(including weekly analytical papers) 35%
¥Discussion
Anchors 10%
¥Short
Papers (4 at 10% each) 40%
¥Final
Essay Review 15%
HONOR SYSTEM:
Students are expected to follow
the Virginia Tech Graduate Honor Code for all assignments. While I donÕt mind if you collaborate
with others or look at published material related to the assigned readings (in
fact, I strongly encourage both of these things), ultimately the ideas you
express in your writing and presentations should be your own or be properly
attributed. Otherwise we would all
be forced to live in world of deceit and distrust that most of us would prefer
not to inhabit.
A FINAL WORD:
The above discussion sounds more
formal than I would like, but I think itÕs important to make the ground rules
clear at the outset. What I want
to say now is that IÕm really looking forward to the opportunity to read,
ponder, and discuss with you some important scholarship from a field in which I
am passionately interested. I also
want you to know that I am here to help you learn. Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions,
concerns, difficulties related to this course, or even if you just want to chat
about the issues it raises. I know
that approaching a professor can be intimidating for some, but I want to assure
you that I enjoy meeting with students and I do everything I possible to make
myself accessible to them.
SCHEDULE:
Jan. 22: Introduction and Brief
Overview
Donald Worster, ÒDoing
Environmental History,Ó in The Ends of the Earth, ed. by Donald Worster (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1988), 289-307.
William Cronon, ÒThe Uses of
Environmental History,Ó Environmental History Review 17 (Fall 1993):
1-22.
Mart Stewart, ÒEnvironmental
History: Profile of a Developing Field,Ó The History Teacher 31 (May 1998): 350-368.
Recommended Reading:
Hughes, J. D., What Is
Environmental History (New York: Polity
Press, 2006).
Ted Steinberg, Down to Earth:
NatureÕs Role in American History (New
York: Oxford, 2002).
Carolyn Merchant, ed., Major
Problems in American Environmental History
(Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath, 1993).
Carolyn Merchant, The Columbia
Guide to American Environmental History
(New York: Columbia University Press, 2002).
John Opie, NatureÕs Nation: An
Environmental History of the United States
(Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt Brace College Publishers, 1998).
Warren, Louis S., ed., American
Environmental History (Malden, Mass.:
Blackwell Publishing, 2005).
Alfred Crosby, ÒThe Past and
Present of Environmental History,Ó American Historical Review 100 (1995): 1177-1189.
E. A. R. Bird, ÒThe Social
Construction of Nature: Theoretical Approaches to the History of Environmental
Problems,Ó Environmental Review 11
(1987): 255-64.
ÒA Round Table: Environmental
History,Ó Journal of American History
76 (1990): 1087 1147. Includes
perspectives from Worster, Crosby, White, Merchant, Cronon, and Pyne.
Martin Melosi, ÒThe Place of the
City in Environmental History,Ó Environmental History Review 17 (Spring 1993): 1-23.
David Demeritt, ÒEcology,
Objectivity, and Critique in Writings on Nature and Human Societies,Ó Journal
of Historical Geography 20 (1994): 22-37.
William Cronon, ÒComment: Cutting
Lose or Running Aground?,Ó Journal of Historical Geography 20 (1994): 38-43.
Jeffrey Stine and Joel Tarr, ÒAt
the Intersection of Histories: Technology and the Environment,Ó Technology
and Culture 39 (Oct. 1998): 601-640.
Alan Taylor, ÒUnnatural
Inequalities: Social and Environmental Histories,Ó Environmental History (Oct. 1996): 6-19.
David Arnold, The Problem of
Nature: Environment, Culture and European Expansion (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996).
Raymond Williams, ÒIdeas of
Nature,Ó in Problems in Materialism and Culture (London: Verso, 1980).
Neil Evernden, The Social
Creation of Nature (Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1992).
Michael E. Soule and Gary Lease,
eds., Reinventing Nature? :
Responses to Postmodern Deconstruction
(Washington: Island Press, 1995).
William Cronon, ed., Uncommon
Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature
(New York: W. W. Norton, 1995).
ÒEnvironmental History: Retrospect
and Prospect,Ó Pacific Historical Review
70 (2001): 55-111. Included
contributions by Samuel P. Hays, Char Miller, Vera Norwood, J. Donald Hughes,
and Richard White.
Ted Steinberg, ÒDown to Earth:
Nature, Agency, and Power in History,Ó American Historical Review 107 (June 2002): 798-820.
Charles C. Mann, 1491: New
Revelations of the Americas before Columbus
Recommended Reading:
W. M. Donovan, ÒThe Pristine Myth:
The Landscape of the Americas in 1492,Ó Annals of the Association of
American Geographers 82 (1992): 369-385.
Shepard Krech III, The
Ecological Indian: Myth and History (New
York: W. W. Norton, 1999).
Alfred Crosby, The Columbian
Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1972).
Alfred Crosby, Ecological Imperialism: The
Biological Expansion of Europe, 900-1900 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1986).
Calvin Martin, Keepers of the
Game: Indian-Animal Relationships and the Fur Trade (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978).
J. Donald Hughes, North
American Indian Ecology, 2nd ed. (El Paso:
Texas Western Press, 1986).
William Cronon, Changes in the
Land, vii-170.
Recommended Reading:
Carolyn Merchant, Ecological
Revolutions: Nature, Gender, and Science in New England (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989)
Timothy Silver, A New Face on
the Countryside: Indians, Colonists, and Slaves in South Atlantic Forests,
1500-1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1990).
Brian Donahue, The Great
Meadow: Farmers and the Land in Colonial Concord
Recommended Reading:
Steven Stoll, Larding the Lean
Earth: Soil and Society in Nineteenth-Century America
Jack T. Kirby, Poquosin: A
Study of Rural Landscape and Society
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995).
Mart A. Stewart, ÒWhat Nature
Suffers to GroeÓ: Life, Labor, and Landscape on the Georgia Coast, 1680-1920 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1996).
Roderick Nash, Wilderness and
the American Mind, vii-237.
William Cronon, ÒThe Trouble with
Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature,Ó Environmental History 1 (1996): 7-28.
Recommended Reading:
Max Oelschlaeger, The Idea of
Wilderness (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1991).
J. Baird Callicott and Michael P.
Nelson, The Great New Wilderness Debate: An Expansive Collection of Writings
Defining Wilderness from John Muir to Gary Snyder (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1998).
Aldo Leopold, A Sand County
Almanac (New York: Oxford Univ. Press,
1949).
David Rothenberg and Marta
Ulvaeus, The World and the Wild: Expanding Wilderness Conservation beyond
its American Roots (Tucson: University of
Arizona Press, 2001).
Michael L. Lewis, American
Wilderness: A New History (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2007)
Mark Spence, Dispossessing the
Wilderness: Indian Removal and the Making of the National Parks, 3-139.
Recommended Reading:
Philip Burnham, Indian Country,
GodÕs Country: Native Americans and the National Parks (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 2000).
Robert H. Keller and Michael F.
Turek, American Indians and the National Parks (Tucson : University of Arizona Press, 1998).
Karl Jacoby, Crimes against
Nature: Squatters, Poachers, Thieves, and the Hidden History of American
Conservation (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 2001)
Paul S. Sutter, Driven Wild:
How the Fight against the Automobile Launched the Modern Wilderness Movement, vii-263.
Recommended Reading:
Michael P. Cohen, The History
of the Sierra Club, 1892-1970 (San
Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1988).
Mark Harvey, A Symbol of
Wilderness: Echo Park and the American Conservation Movement (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1994).
Mark Harvey, Wilderness
Forever: Howard Zahniser and the Path to the Wilderness Act (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2005).
John McPhee, Encounters with
the Archdruid (New York: Farrar, Straus
and Giroux, 1971).
March 19: The Dust Bowl
Donald Worster, Dust Bowl, 3-243.
Recommended Reading:
Timothy Egan, The Worst Hard
Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2006).
Donald Worster, Rivers of
Empire: Water, Aridity, and the Growth of the American West (New York: Pantheon, 1985).
Marc Reisner, Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water (New York: Viking, 1985).
Ted Steinberg, Acts of God: The
Unnatural History of Natural Disasters
Recommended Reading:
Mike Davis, Ecology of Fear:
Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster
(New York: Metropolitan Books, 1998).
Eric Klineberg, Heat Wave: A
Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago, new
ed (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003).
Rutherford Platt, Disasters and
Democracy: The Politics of Extreme Natural Events (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 1999).
Craig Colten, An Unnatural Metropolis: Wrestling New Orleans from Nature
Recommended Reading:
Craig Colten, Transforming New
Orleans and Its Environs: Centuries of Change (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2001).
Ari Kelman, A River and Its
City: The Nature of Landscape in New Orleans
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003).
Douglas Brinkley, The Great
Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast (New York: William Morrow, 2006).
Chester Hartman and Gregory D.
Squires, eds., There Is No Such Thing as Natural Disaster (New York: Routledge, 2006).
David Stradling, Smokestacks and Progressives: Environmentalists, Engineers, and Air Quality in America, 1881-1951
Recommended Reading:
Martin Melosi, ÒThe Place of the
City in Environmental History,Ó Environmental History Review 17 (1993): 1-23.
Joel A. Tarr, The Search for
the Ultimate Sink: Urban Pollution in Historical Perspective (Akron: University of Akron Press, 1996).
Martin Melosi, The Sanitary City: Urban Infrastructure in America from Colonial Times to the Present (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000).
Andrew Hurley, Environmental
Inequalities: Class, Race, and Industrial Pollution in Gary Indiana, 1945-1980, xiii-246.
Recommended Reading:
Robert Bullard, Dumping in
Dixie: Race, Class, and Environmental Quality (Boulder: Westview Press, 1990).
David Pellow, Garbage Wars: The
Struggle for Environmental Justice in Chicago (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2004).
Sylvia Hood Washington, Packing
Them In: An Archeology of Environmental Racism in icago, 1865-1954 (Landham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2005)
Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the
Countryside: Suburban Sprawl the Rise of American Environmentalism, xi-270.
Recommended Reading:
Kenneth Jackson, Crabgrass
Frontiers: The Suburbanization of the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985).
Hal Rothman, The Greening of a
Nation?: Environmentalism in the United States since 1945 (Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace College Publishers, 1998).
Robert Fishman, Bourgeois
Utopia: The Rise and Fall of Suburbia (New
York: Basic Books, 1987).
Donald Fleming, ÒRoots of the New
Conservation Movement,Ó Perspectives in American History 6 (1972): 7-91.
Samuel P. Hays, Beauty, Health,
and Permanence: Environmental Politics in the United States, 1955-1985 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987).
Dolores Hayden, Building
Suburbia: Green Fields and Urban Growth, 1820-2000 (New York: Pantheon, 2003).
May 3: Final Paper (Essay
Review) Due by 5:00 P.M.