portfolio goalsfaculty.umb.edu/pjt/759-03bm.doc · web viewaldo leopold, “february: good oak,”...

A Teaching Portfolio in the Making:

Environmental History From the Ground Up

9 May 2003Barry Ross Muchnick

Environmental History Course Quartet. . . A Précis

History is not a problemThe writing of it is

Savoie Lottinville1

Writing history is not a problem. Though challenging, the private act of researching and

writing history pales in comparison to the flushed challenged of teaching it. Teaching history,

especially environmental history, is the real trial of knowledge, acumen, and influence. Drawing

us quickly into the complexity between and within intersecting scales of cultural and ecological

patterns, studies of interactions between humans and the natural world are by necessity

complicated – and interdisciplinary. As such, environmental historians consider not only the

physical universe, but also the symbolic, the metaphorical, the literary. To the data collected on

soil conditions, geology, hydrology, wildlife, forest health, microbes, and biodiversity, we gather

and glean important documents from poems and films, diaries, legal briefs, photographs,

paintings, music, myths and ideologies, and architecture. If writing environmental history is akin

to long uphill journey then teaching it is a truly Sisyphusian task.

This semester I have tried my hand at rolling the boulder up the hill by empirically (or at

least imaginatively) testing the anonymous adage which proclaims one really doesn’t know a

topic until one tries to teach it to someone else. Therefore, since the best way to learn a set of

theories, materials, or skills is to parlay that knowledge from the abstract realm of philosophical

understanding to the concrete realm of pedagogical practice, I developed four undergraduate

course syllabi to plumb and probe the depths of my own facility with environmental history.

The attached syllabi are the result of an extremely rewarding process whereby I ask and

address a series of questions regarding my personal and professional objectives, the problems

1 Quoted as a header for the “Acknowledgements” in James Axtell, The Invasion Within: The Contest of Cultures in Colonial North America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), xiii.

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and parameters of the field itself, and my educational goals for my (future) students. For

example, in what ways can I use a teaching career to expressly link scholarship, activism, and

community service? Which materials will allow me to balance the requisite coverage of

canonical texts with bold forays into a cross-cultural and critical analysis of the tools, tropes, and

techniques of environmental history? How can I organize information and ideas not only to

provide a foundation of theoretical concepts and interpretive skills but also to facilitate students’

critical thinking and to foster an interest in further, self-guided learning? If I strive to improve

the retention and relevance of course content, to foster supportive, purposeful relationships

between myself and my students, and to promote active rather than passive learning, what kind

of assignments or learning spaces can I create within the structure of a university setting?2 Given

environmental history’s interdisciplinary modus operandi, what suite of source materials will

best increase students’ abilities to engage, to analyze, and to articulate their own assumptions

about and interactions with the natural world and each other?

To wit: how might I instill in students a sense of thinking like scientists, but artistically:

to test how arguments might apply in different contexts; to require high standards of evidence; to

place scientific and technical concerns in a creative tension with the ability to situate events and

ideas in their historical context in order to account for discrepancies in sources; to apply this

knowledge in support of original interpretations written in a scholarly, persuasive, and

compelling manner.

Before I mention specific aspects of the syllabi, I want briefly to describe how I feel my

pedagogical philosophy situates ideas about studying the past into a framework for changing the

future. I believe education matters a great deal. Ideas count. So do the processes whereby ideas

are naturalized, socialized, and incorporated into the fabric of mainstream popular and

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intellectual culture. Teaching environmental history is for me a way of selecting the most

colorful and durable threads from the technicolor past, teasing apart the fundamental fibers of

meaning, and saying to students, “O.K. We have these threads which stretch all the way back to

our origins. How do they connect with the tapestry we call today? More important, how can we

re-weave our stories of self-understanding to create the kind of future we want to have?” In this

way teaching is both a form of scholarship and a type of community (broadly, and biotically

construed) service, a technique for linking the lessons of the past to the potential for the future

through investigation, experimentation, and imagination.

One of the fundamental issues at the core of my attraction to and concern about the

practice of teaching history is the tension between an analytic and descriptive mode of inquiry.

To sharply separate narrative and analysis runs counter to the kind of fusion I think marks solid

history and effective teaching. Blending the rigor of the sciences with the interpretive finesse of

the arts is central to my vision of effective environmental history. Agreeing with but expanding

upon Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, the answer to the question, “What constitutes useful

knowledge?” is not an either / or proposition. Rather, innovative perspectives and solutions lie in

the and, the synthetic qualities of deep interdisciplinary scholarship and practice. “The two

processes,” the physicist writes, “that of science and that of art, are not very different. Both

science and art form in the course of the centuries a human language by which we can speak

about the more remote parts of reality.”3 My projected syllabi assume a dynamic and changing

relationship between art and science, one as apt to produce contradictions as continuities.

Moreover, they assume that the interactions of the two are dialectical.

If the remote parts of reality include the near and distant past, environmental history as a

field is also positioned to excavate the roots of the paradox underlying the historian’s practice;

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the postmodern critique that the veracity of interpretation rests on a faithfulness to a reality lying

outside or prior to that interpretation. The same complexity marks the ongoing debate about the

extent to which wilderness – indeed, nature itself – is a cultural concept. I want to pass that

ambiguity and uncertainty on to my students so that they can wrestle with the inherent and

intractable problems of preserving as an instrument of inquiry something whose truth value we

question.4 But deconstructing our views of nature first requires exposure to and a working

understanding of the basic themes of environmental history. a task which calls for an accessible

yet challenging set of materials in the classroom.

In each course syllabi, I tried to balance critical monographs, shorter articles, and

excerpts from influential works. Because book length texts devote so many pages of a student’s

assigned time to single themes or topics, they inevitably reduce the number of topics that can be

covered in course readings. Worse, they simultaneously ghettoize the topics they do cover:

offering one book on gender, one on Native Americans, one on the history of ecological ideas,

and so on, with little overlap among the various subjects. Yet there are many books that

introduce their subject successfully to undergraduates, books that are particularly good at

provoking classroom discussion, books that work well together in linking the overarching themes

of a course. William Cronon’s Changes in the Land, for example. At the same time, constructing

a reader allows the inclusion of many more, shorter, readings covering a wider range of topics

and possesses the distinct advantage of drawing from various disciplines, showcasing a variety of

media that are either no longer in print or remain unpublished, and introducing undergraduates to

scholarly journals.

In the North American environmental history lecture course I used a combination of

classic texts, experimental new narratives, films, children’s books, short stories, and scientific

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journal articles to create a rounded source base. Integrating these into lectures along with video

clips, audio clips, and active learning exercises, I hope to adapt the traditional lecture to more

readily accommodate individual learning styles of students. The modified chronological

approach of the course follows a rough temporal trajectory but is organized around thematic

clusters that permit movement forward and backward in time to accentuate key turning points,

sets of conditions, or relevant ideological genealogies. Though focusing on North America, the

materials range far from the lands now known as the United States, reinforcing the notion that

any environmental perspective on national history is indeed a trans-national perspective.

My representation of diverse geographic regions is paralleled by introducing

marginalized voices. Ethnicity, gender, and class concerns interact with ecological questions to

present a solid narrative sweep of the period covered by the course without erecting a monolithic

interpretive structure. A central mechanism of the course is that the students learn to see the past,

as Bill Cronon advises, “as a story to be told rather than a problem to be solved”. 5 Written

assignments like response papers and film critiques provide students the opportunity to disarm

the defenses built into narrative that seem to promote the idea that a convincing narrative

requires no more routing out. The mid term and final exams gauge retention and recall, while

offering the chance to demonstrate facility and reinforce competency in thinking and writing

about nature as a physical entity and a influential set of ideas. Finally, a creative project allows

students to personalize the course materials in ways not often available in university curricula.

The methods seminar revels in environmental history’s methodological impurity and

turns on how we can integrate vastly different temporal and spatial scales, methodologies,

sources of evidence, and styles of inquiry and communication. Beginning with an orientation in

the discipline and sessions discussing the predominant meta-narratives and the literary devices

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behind them, the course switches gears and starts toward a more workshop-oriented design. A

meeting targeting library training and research competency precede a unit of sessions which

delve, in turn, into reading images on canvas and on film, decoding cartographic representations

of time and space, using material objects, reading the landscape, improving scientific literacy,

and examining paradigmatic myths of ecology and social theory. The underlying premise is that

objects made, modified, or in some cases imagined by man – including the landscape itself –

reflect, consciously or unconsciously, directly or indirectly, the beliefs and behaviors of the

individuals who made, commissioned, sold, purchased, or used them, and by extension the

beliefs of the larger culture to which they belong.

Consider the week on photography. Although historians have long used images as

illustrations to support or reiterate arguments developed through the study of more conventional

literary sources, we will ask how pictures can be used as distinct primary sources. Using

photographs, prints, watercolors and natural history illustrations, the class will consider the

documentary and ideological content of images through an examination of such issues as

patronage, the politics and economics of production and publication, the technological

constraints placed on image makers and publishers, the relationship between visual images and

literary texts, and viewer responses.

The session on scientific literacy also prepares students to place knowledge making

alongside image making and to problematize its relationship to a larger historical moment. By

questioning awareness of how the scientific endeavor is deployed to support or subvert

arguments, I hope to stress that science as a social process not only transmits shared habits,

attitudes, values, and ideologies across generations, but also shapes laws and policies in different

historical contexts as the values placed on science and professional expertise changes over time.6

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A writing practicum component of the course integrates sensory engagement, intellectual

engagement, and emotional response with exercises in nuanced description, analysis, and

deduction. Guiding students through the process of developing a significant research project

emphasizes that science and literature are kin: both are creative human endeavors that carry with

them a complex set of myths, paradigms, and protocols. For example, the iterative process of

observation, data (source) collection, hypothesis formation, inference, problem solving, and

communication is echoed in the practicum series: writing techniques, interpretation, outlining

and structuring, drafting, and presentation. Again, thinking as scientists, artistically.

The workshop method is also at the heart of the third seminar, an exploration of issues of

equity and environmental justice in North America with all its nationalism, superstitions, class

distinctions, and prejudices. Though the guided research process is similar, the final research

project is paired with a service learning project which enables students to synthesize the material

learned in the course through an application of their own research on behalf of a community or

campus partner. Grouped together in small teams, the students will provide information and

analysis on a particular environmental justice issue for a local non-profit organization, working

educational farm, or a campus organization. The service learning project assists the larger task of

doing history by helping us break down our social and ideological barriers instead of

emphasizing them, and bringing a consciousness of the past alive in our everyday efforts.

The active component of studying the history of environmental justice is embedded in the

subject matter in two ways. First, studying the past from the bottom up corrects for past

tendencies to study the elites. Second, re-examining the divergent histories of conventional

modes of conservation and social movements concerned primarily with quality of life issues will

help students not only to address and understand the interactions of social and environmental

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problems but to encourage them to debate the official ideologies and representations of the past,

and hopefully help them see themselves as active citizens shaping their own lives.7

Finally, the fourth seminar begins with patterns of movement in the students daily lives.

A seminar more exclusively drawing from literary sources than the previous three, “Routes of

Travel” explores the difference between “rootedness” and “routedness” in the human and natural

world. Following men and women up, down, and around the continent on foot and on horseback,

in boats, cars, and trains over the span of four hundred years, we will unpack the structural and

technical challenges of recording and re-telling an essentially linear expedition in narrative

episodes. The course will approach how notions of region, nature, mobility, and technology

intersect with and influence records of reality. The real point of this course is to stir the

imagination, to overcome the ennui and disconnectedness so prevalent in modern society. By

asking how people in the past relate to specific places – how and why they chose to leave, for

example, what motivates migration – students will reflect the location of their own lives, both in

practical and theoretical terms.

Behind all the questions guiding these course syllabi lie others. What constitutes a

privileged claim to knowledge and how can we – as students, scholars, teachers, and

practitioners – understand, adjudicate, and perhaps negotiate different knowledges constructed

at different levels of abstraction under radically different material and historical conditions?89

Pedagogy for me is as much about learning as it is about teaching. Education is not merely about

gathering and correlating facts or acquiring knowledge. These course syllabi are signposts along

my own personal, intellectual, and professional journey, cairns to mark a path for other students,

travelers, and teachers.

7 Green, James R. “Workers, Unions, and the Politics of Public History.” The Public Historian 11(Fall 1989) 4: 13.

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Notes

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North American Environmental History

Instructor: Barry Ross MuchnickSpring 2003Lecture Time and Location: M, W, 1:20-2:30 p.m., Drumgoole Hall, Room 28Office Hours: M, W, 3:00-4:00 p.m.Email office hours: [email protected], M, W, F (3-4 p.m.) Though I check my email constantly throughout the week, I will set aside

specific blocks of time each week to respond to your submitted questions and comments.

Course website: www.earthatlast/envhist/future.edu

Course DescriptionWhat is “nature,” anyway? Animal, mineral, vegetable – ethereal? How have ideas about and interactions with the natural world shaped life in North America in the past? Conversely, how has the natural world in turn shaped the attitudes and behavior of inhabitants of what is now known as the United States? And how have human attitudes and activities worked to reflect, to reproduce, and to re-envision their cultural and political lives? These questions, along with others will guide us throughout the semester as we study the changing relationships between humans and the natural world from the Puritan era to the present. Our central premise will be that much of the familiar terrain of the history of North America looks very different when considered in its environmental context, and that one can learn a great deal about both history and the environment by studying the two together.

From the lichen encrusted Plymouth rock to the rock music of the 1980s, nature has played a central role in the natural and cultural history of North America. Subjects we will cover include: Native American resource strategies; the ecological impacts of European arrival; the effects of cultural and biological migrations; the rise of capitalist markets, urban centers, and industrial development; agricultural innovations and disasters; changing scientific concepts and developing environmental movements; the explosion and implications of technology; the transformations of ideas about nature, its use, and its values; the effects of pollution, toxics, chemicals, and other wastes; and the complex interrelationships between gender, ethnicity, power, and the representation of, access to, and role in governing natural resources. Investigating the explanatory power of environmental history will allow us to expose the roots of institutions, consumption patterns, economic activities, and shifting power dynamics in society.

Course GoalsOne major purpose of this course is to introduce you to the interdisciplinary and specialized field of environmental history as a way to improve your ability to think critically and historically. Along the way you will develop skills – orally and in writing – for inquiring about, contextualizing, and analyzing a variety of media viewed from an environmental angle. By examining material that bridges the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences, you will also increase your level of exposure to and comfort in dealing with the complexity, ambiguity, and uncertainty in human affairs and ecosystems. Not only will you learn about how facts, figures and trends fit into major themes of North American history, but you will also learn how to think creatively and place accepted versions of the past in tension with alternatives.

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Student ResponsibilitiesUltimately, this educational experience is your own and we are here to help you make the most of it. At its best, the study of history cuts across the grain of conventional wisdom, challenges staid or stagnant interpretations, undermines cherished assumptions, and erodes stereotypes. At its worst it reads like dense, undercooked pudding, tastes no better, and serves as a fact-finding exercise. I organized the materials and structure of this course with this tension in mind. Nevertheless, if something is not clear or you have ideas about how to improve a week’s theme, I am responsive to constructive feedback, an important adaptability you too will develop in response to feedback on your written work. We ask that you think seriously and creatively about history as a means to debate the meanings of texts, to analyze the judgment of authors and artists, and to engage the opinions of your peers.

Course Requirements [in brief] (grading schema and assignment details follow preliminary schedule)

In addition to attendance at lectures, discussion sections, and evening screenings, there will two exams, a number of short written assignments (three 1-2 page and one 5-7 page essay), and a creative project.

Attendance and Participation 25%Screenings and Film Critiques 15%Midterm Exam 15%Final Exam 20%Mid-length Essay (4-6 pp.) 15%Creative Project 10%

100%

Readings: (Books, CD, course packet)Books William Cronon, Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England

(New York: Hill and Wang, 1983). Alfred Crosby Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe 900-1900 (New

York: Cambridge University Press, 1986). Ted Steinberg, Down to Earth: Nature’s Role in American History (New York: Oxford

University Press, 2002). Jennifer Price, Flight Maps: Adventures with Nature in Modern America (New York: Basic

Books, 1999). Stephen Stoll, Larding the Lean Earth: Soil and Society in Nineteenth-Century America

(New York: Hill and Wang, 2002). Stephen J. Pyne, How the Canyon Became Grand: A Short History (New York: Penguin

Putnam Inc., 1998). Richard White, The Organic Machine: The Remaking of the Columbia River (New York: Hill

and Wang, 1995). Glenda Riley, Women and Nature: Saving the “Wild” West (Lincoln, Nebraska: University of

Nebraska Press, 1999). Louis Warren, The Hunter’s Game: Poachers and Conservationists in Twentieth-Century

America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997). Maurice Sendak, Where the Wild Things Are (New York: Harper and Row, 1963). Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside: Suburban Sprawl and the Rise of American

Environmentalism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001).

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CD Woody Guthrie: Columbia River Collection (Rounder Records 1036).

Course Packet Available at your local photocopy service

Preliminary Lecture Schedule

Readings followed by a bold (O) are available online. Readings followed by a bold (R) are on reserve. (P) connotes readings included in the course packet.

Week 1Whither, weather, and rye?

An Introduction to Environmental History(122 pp.)

Lecture 1: As natural as the day is . . . what, exactly?

Reading Raymond Williams, “Ideas of Nature,” in Problems in Materialism and Culture (London:

Verso, 1980): 67-85. (P) (18) Overview discussion of the organization and requirements of the course; details, expectations,

goals.

Lecture 2: The Nature of History :: The History of Nature

Reading Carolyn Merchant, “Nature as Female,” in The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the

Scientific Revolution (New York: Harper & Row, 1980): 1-41. (P) (40) “The Potential of Environmental History,” in Roderick Frazier Nash, ed., American

Environmentalism: Readings in Conservation History, (New York: McGraw-Hill, Inc., 3rd ed., 1990): 1-8. (P) (7)

Aldo Leopold, “February: Good Oak,” in Sand County Almanac, and Sketches Here and There (New York: Oxford University Press, 1949): 6-18. (P) (12)

William Cronon, “Kennecott Journey: The Paths out of Town,” in William Cronon, George Miles, and Jay Gitlin, eds., Under an Open Sky: Rethinking America’s Western Past (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1992):28-51. (P) (23)

Donald Worster, “Appendix: Doing Environmental History,” in Donald Worster ed., The Ends of the Earth: Perspectives on Modern Environmental History (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988): 289-307. (P) (18)

Lynn White, Jr., “The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis,” Science, 155 (March 10, 1967): 1203-1207. (P) (4)

start reading Ecological Imperialism for next week—trust me.

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Week 2Imperial Invasions, Microbial Migrations: Ecology of a Changing Planet

Lecture 3: Conquering pestilence: “Neo-Europes,” Biological Determinism and the Columbian Encounter

Lecture 4: Disease and Dispossession

Reading (243 pp.) Alfred Crosby Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe 900-1900 (New

York: Cambridge University Press, 1986): 1-69, 132-216, 269-308. (226)

Ted Steinberg, Down to Earth: Nature’s Role in American History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002): 21-38. (17)

EVENING SCREENING: The Columbian Exchange

Week 3Colonialism and the Unsettling of New England

Lecture 5: The Howling Wilderness

Lecture 6: Indian and Colonial Ecologies: The Native/Exotics Debate

Reading (172 pp.) William Cronon, Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England

(New York: Hill and Wang, 1983): 1-81. (80) Calvin Martin, “The Four Lives of a Micmac Copper Pot” Ethnohistory 22 (Spring,

1975) 2: 111-133. (O) (22) Ted Steinberg, Down to Earth: Nature’s Role in American History (New York: Oxford

University Press, 2002): ix-xii, 3-20. (21) Carolyn Merchant, “Farm, Fen, and Forest: European Ecology in Transition,” in The Death of

Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution (New York: Harper & Row, 1980): 42-68. (P) (26)

Calvin Martin, “The European Impact on the Culture of a Northeastern Algonquian Tribe: An Ecological Interpretation,” William and Mary Quarterly Series 3, 31 (January, 1974) 1: 3-26. (O)

(23)

Week 4Capitalism and the Consequences of Commercial Markets

Lecture 7: Meandering Merchandise: Wildlife, Property and the Commodification of the Natural World

Lecture 8: Enclosing the Commons: Frontiers, Forests, Fences, Fields, and Feces

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Reading (182 pp.) William Cronon, Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England

(New York: Hill and Wang, 1983):82-170. (88) Ted Steinberg, Down to Earth: Nature’s Role in American History (New York: Oxford

University Press, 2002): 39-70. (31) Jim O’Brian, “The History of North America From the Standpoint of the Beaver,” Free

Spirits: Annals of the Insurgent Imagination, 1 (INFORMATION: HERE, 1982): 45-54.(P)9)

Jennifer Price, “Missed Connections: The Passenger Pigeon Extinction,” in Flight Maps: Adventures with Nature in Modern America (New York: Basic Books, 1999): 1-55. (54)

EVENING SCREENING: Confronting the Wilderness

Week 5Dark Sweat, White Cotton: Ecology of Slave Labor

Lecture 9: Cruel Crops: Soil, Society, and the Civil War

Lecture 10: IN CLASS MIDTERM EXAMINATION

Reading (71 pp.) Karl Jacoby, “Slaves by Nature?: Domestic Animals and Human Slaves,” Slavery and

Abolition 15 (April 1994): 89-99.(P) (10) Mart A. Stewart, “Rice, Water, and Power: Landscapes of Domination and Resistance in the

Low Country, 1790-1880,” Environmental History Review 15 (Fall 1991): 47-64.(P) (17) Ted Steinberg, Down to Earth: Nature’s Role in American History (New York: Oxford

University Press, 2002): 71-115. (44)

Week 6Antebellum Attitudes: Agricultural Improvement,

Industrialization, and Resource Use

Lecture 11: Dunghill Democracy

Lecture 12: Countryside in the Cities: Manufactories, Machines, and the Metropolis

Reading (164 pp.) Stephen Stoll, Larding the Lean Earth: Soil and Society in Nineteenth-Century America

(New York: Hill and Wang, 2002): 1-15, 19-66, 69-108, 143-150, 166-169, 209-213. (109)


Raymond W. Sinclair, “Personal Boundaries in the Urban Environment: The Legal Attack on Noise, 1865-1930,” Environmental Review 3 (1979). (P) (15)

Suellen M. Roy, “’Municipal Housekeeping’: The Role of Women in Improving Urban Sanitation Practices, 1880-1917,” in Martin V. Melosi, ed., Pollution and Reform in (25)

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American Cities, 1870-1930 (Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, 1980):173-198.(P)

EVENING SCREENING: To be announced

Week 7Expeditions and Explorations: Representing Nature

Lecture 13: Sampling the Sublime: Romantic Reconnaissance, Realistic Resources

Lecture 14: Earth Science and Scientific Spectacle

Reading (182 pp.) Stephen J. Pyne, How the Canyon Became Grand: A Short History (New York: Penguin

Putnam Inc., 1998). (182)

Week 8“In God we Trusted, In Kansas we Busted”:

Technology, Mass Migrations, and Cultural Upheaval

Lecture 15: “This Machine Kills Fascists”: Dust Bowl Ditties and One Great Depression

Lecture 16: Dam it all: Hydroelectricity, Industrial Agriculture, and the Remaking of the Countryside

Reading (150 pp. and listening to Guthrie CD) Richard White, The Organic Machine: The Remaking of the Columbia River (New York: Hill

and Wang, 1995). (113) “Roll on Columbia, Roll on,” “Mile an’ a half from th’ end of th’ line,” and “Columbia (5)

Talkin’ Blues,” in Bill Murlin, ed., Woody Guthrie Roll on Columbia: The Columbia River Collection (Bethlehem, Pennsylvania: Sing Out Publications, 1991): 14-15, 26-27, 56-58. (P)


David W. Orr, “Biological Diversity, Agriculture, and the Liberal Arts,” Conservation Biology 5 (September, 1991) 3: 268-270.(P) (2)

EVENING SCREENING: The Plow That Broke the Plains (1936)

Week 9Tipping the Scales (not just one’s rhetorical hat):

Beleaguered White Men: Conservation, Contradictions, and Community

Lecture 17: Environment, Politics, and Patriarchy (In class screening of excerpts from “The Paper Tiger Project,” Donna Haraway)

Lecture 18: Aim High, Shout Loud: Conservation, Preservation, and Recreation

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Reading (208 pp.) Glenda Riley, Women and Nature: Saving the “Wild” West (Lincoln, Nebraska: University of

Nebraska Press, 1999): xi-xviii, 1-21, 43-113, 154-193 (137) Ted Steinberg, Down to Earth: Nature’s Role in American History (New York: Oxford

University Press, 2002): 138-156. (18) Jennifer Price, “When Women Were Women, Men Were Men, and Birds Were Hats,” in

Flight Maps: Adventures with Nature in Modern America (New York: Basic Books, 1999): 57-110. (53)

Week 10State Power, Class, and Coercive Conservation

Lecture 19: The Faraway Nearby: Localism, Nationalism, and Nature

Lecture 20: The Contested Commons: Natural Resource Management and National Parks

Reading (171 pp.) Louis Warren, The Hunter’s Game: Poachers and Conservationists in Twentieth-Century

America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997): 1-172. (171)

EVENING SCREENING: Talking with Thoreau.

Week 11Plastic Flamingos and ’57 Chevies: Designing Suburban America

Lecture 25: Ranchers and Ranchettes: From Cattle to Carports

Lecture 26: Is Route 66 the Only Way?: National Parks and Consumer Culture

Reading (253 pp.) Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside: Suburban Sprawl and the Rise of American

Environmentalism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001): 1-118, 189-270. (198) Jennifer Price, “A Brief Natural History of the Plastic Pink Flamingo,” in Flight Maps:

Adventures with Nature in Modern America (New York: Basic Books, 1999): 111-166. (55)

Week 12Where the Wild Things Aren’t: Wilderness and Environmental Justice

Lecture 21: Subaltern Struggles: The Roots of Environmental Justice

Lecture 22: The Ecology of Exclusion

Reading ( pp.) The Wilderness Act of 1964 (excerpts) (O) The Civil Rights Act (excerpts) (O)

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Martin Luther King, Jr., “Preface,” “A knock at midnight,” “Antidotes to Fear,” in Strength to Love (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Fortress Press, 1963): 11-12, 58-68, 115-126.

Shel Silverstein, Lafcadio: The Lion Who Shot Back (New York: Harper & Row, 1963).(P) (~30)

Maurice Sendak, Where the Wild Things Are (New York: Harper and Row, 1963). (~40) Patricia Nelson Limerick, Hoping Against History: Environmental Justice in the Twenty-first

Century,” in Kathryn M. Mutz, Gary C. Bryner, and Douglas S. Kenney, eds., Justice and Natural Resources Concepts, Strategies, and Applications (Washington, D. C.: Island Press, 2002): 337-354. (P) (17)

EVENING SCREENING: Deadly Deception

Week 13Earth Day, Ecology, and the New Environmentalism

Lecture: Atomic Psalms: Population Bombs and Environmental Anxieties in a Nuclear Age

Lecture: The Politicization of Ecology

Reading (152 pp.) Rachel Carson, “Reporter at Large,” The New Yorker 38 (16 June 1962): 35-40; “Beetle

scare, spray planes, and dead wildlife,” Audubon 64 (November 1962): 318-323; “Poisoned waters kill our fish and wildlife,” Audubon 64 (September 1962): 250-3; “Beyond the dreams of the Borgias,” National Parks Magazine 36 (October 1962): 2, 4-7; “Rachel Carson answers her critics,” Audubon 65 (September 1963): 262-5. (24)

Daniel J. Rohlf, “Six Biological Reasons Why the Endangered Species Act Doesn’t Work – And What to Do About It,” Conservation Biology 5 (September 1991) 3:273-282. (P) (9)

Michael Smith, “Advertising the Atom,” in Michael Lacey, ed., Government and Environmental Politics (Baltimore, Maryland: John Hopkins Press, 1989):233-262. (P) (29)

Christopher Stone, “Should Trees Have Standing? Toward Legal Rights for Natural Objects,” Southern California Law Review45 (1972): 450-501. (51)

Lamont C. Cole, “The Impending Emergence of Ecological Thought,” Bioscience 14 (1964) 7: 30-32. (P) (3)

Donald Worster, “Organic, Economic, and Chaotic Ecology,” in Carolyn Merchant, ed., Major Problems in American Environmental History (Lexington, Massachusetts: D. C. Heath and Company, 1993): 465-479. (P) (14)


EVENING SCREENING: Atomic Cafe

Week 14The United States World Over: Globalized Environmentalism

Lecture 27: Globalization and its Discontents

Lecture 28: Our Common Future: Making Peace With the Planet

Reading (22 pp.)

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William Matthews, “Civilization and its Discontents,” in Christopher Merrill, ed., The Forgotten Language: Contemporary Poets and Nature (Salt Lake City, Utah: Peregrine Smith Books, 1991): 108-109. (P) (2)

William Greider, “’Citizen’ GE,” in Jerry Mander and Edward Goldsmith, The Case Against the Global Economy and for a Turn Toward the Local (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1996): 323-334. (P) (11)

Wendell Berry, “Conserving Communities,” in Jerry Mander and Edward Goldsmith, The Case Against the Global Economy and for a Turn Toward the Local (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1996): 407-416.. (P) (9)

Course requirements, grading, and assignments

1. Participation in lectures and discussion sections is required. (25% of the grade)Attendance will count for 10%, and participation 15%. At some point during each lecture I will distribute a 3x5 card for some kind of brief written exercise. For example, during the first week of class I might ask you to jot down a working definition of nature. Cards will be collected and though ungraded, will count towards determining lecture attendance and participation grade. Please note that participation is more than just opening your mouth for the sake of saying something. It is being prepared to engagingly discuss the assigned readings and/or films, and relate them to the lectures. The success of the discussion section requires that each participant articulate and be able to defend her / his ideas, as well as listen carefully and respectfully to the questions, concerns, and ideas of others. To be clear, class participation will be evaluated according to the following criteria:

You will earn an “A” for consistently coming to section with questions about the materials already in mind. You will have read the materials carefully and considered them critically. In addition to raising issues for other members to discuss, you engage other students in active dialogue by attentively listening to contrary opinions. Your responses to comments on the table often carry discussion to a higher level. In short, you will receive an “A” when you actively participate in the generation, discussion, exchange, and analysis of ideas.

You will earn a “B” for consistently completing the assigned readings on time, but without identifying questions of your own to bring up in section. Though courteous and articulate, you wait passively for others to raise interesting issues, and do not actively engage the ideas of others. Instead, you express your ideas without relating the comments toward the direction of the discussion. A “B” grade connotes occasional participation that either frustrates group discussion through silence or irrelevance.

You will earn a “C” for refusing to participate in discussion. If however, you are clinically or painfully shy, or feel you may better participate in alternative ways, please

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contact me. A grade lower than a “C” will be given to anyone that is consistently unprepared, silent, absent, or unproductively disruptive.

2. Film Series Critiques. (15% of the grade) You must attend 5 out of 7 evening film screenings and write 3 short (1-2 page) critiques. Each paper should respond thoughtfully and analytically to one or more of the films. For example, you might assess the presentation of ideas about, reactions to, and interactions with the natural world. How are issues of power, gender, or labor dealt with in the films? What assumptions does the film reveal or obscure? It may be helpful to place yourself in the shoes of the filmmaker and ask questions about the use of color, focusing techniques, camera movement, image framing, scene sequencing, and transitions are used to generate effect, story, and argument. One film critique is due before the midterm, and another by week 10. I will accept film critiques up until 5 PM on the Friday of even-numbered weeks (e.g. 6, 8, 10. . . ).

3. Midterm Exam (15% of the grade) An in -class 50 minute exam during week 5 will cover the first 8 lectures and the evening screening for week 4. The exam draws from lecture materials (including cultural artifacts such as images, songs, and documents presented during lecture) and discussion sections. The best way to prepare is to attend lectures and actively participate in section dynamics.

4. Final Exam (20% of the grade)The final exam will cover the entire semester, with an emphasis on weeks 9-13. The exam includes short answer/identification, brief essay questions, and your choice of one out of three longer essay questions. The longer essay question will be selected from a set of five essay questions which will be distributed to you in advance.

5. One mid-length (4-6 page) essay. (15% of the grade) For this essay you will critically analyze one of the books you read for class. You will be expected to apply the historical, theoretical, and interpretive skills you have developed during the semester to analyze the argument of the text. If the book was excerpted for class, you should read the entire thing, as well as conduct research to place the book into a larger context of historical inquiry. I will hand out a schedule for discussing potential research ideas, selecting topics, submitting drafts, and due dates during week three. The following remarks are intended to give you a sense for how papers will be graded. Note the emphasis on four key topics: thesis, use of evidence and examples, organization, and writing skills: The Unsatisfactory Paper: The D or F paper either has no thesis at all or one that is

strikingly vague, broad, or uninteresting. There is little inclination that the writer understands the material being presented. The paragraphs do not hold together; ideas do not develop from sentence to sentence throughout the text. This paper usually repeats the same thoughts over and again, perhaps in slightly different language but expressing the same views. Additionally, the paper is often rife with mechanical faults, grammatical errors, and spelling mistakes.

The C Paper: The C paper has a thesis, but it is often nebulous, uninteresting, or obvious. It does not advance an argument that it is of value to debate. The thesis often hangs on personal opinion, and rarely (if at all) uses evidence to justify, defend, or support that opinion. The C paper usually contains mechanical flaws, errors in spelling and grammar, but note that a paper without these flaws can still warrant a C.

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The B Paper: The author of the B paper knows exactly what s/he wants to say. It is well organized, presents worthwhile and interesting ideas, and is supported with sound evidence in a clear and convincing way. Whereas some of the sentences may not be elegant, they are logical, and thought follows from thought. The paragraphs may be unwieldy, but for the most part are organized around the central thesis. The spelling is good, the grammar is precise, and the punctuation is accurate. Above all, the paper makes sense, does not contain irrelevant or peripheral material, and keeps its promise of arguing for an explicit position.

The A Paper: The A paper has all the qualities of the B paper, but in addition it is lively, well paced, exciting, and possesses style. The entire work fits the thesis and demonstrates a mind at work. While it may have a proofreading error or two, it is apparent that these errors are the consequence of the normal accidents all writers encounter, and not the result of neglect or indifference.

6. Creative Project (10% of the grade) Wide open opportunity here. Past examples include photo essays, poems, a short play, song lyrics, paintings, sculpture, interpretive dance, slide shows, cartoon compilations, a short journal, personal environmental histories, etc. You will sign up for and present your project in section (sign-up sheets circulating during week 2). The only limit is your imagination and two requirements. The projects must be 1) historically authentic; and 2) relevant to the subject matter of your chosen week. This is a chance for you to personalize your education, not joke around. You will receive full credit is you meet the above criteria and zero credit if your project is sloppy or half-hearted.

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Methods in Environmental HistoryFall Semester 2004Instructor: Barry Ross Muchnick

Seminar Time and Location: Tuesday 1:00 -3:30p.m., Strout Rm. 128Office Hours: Wednesday 2:00 – 3:00 and by appointment

Email office hours: [email protected] M, W, F (3-4 p.m.) Though I check my email constantly throughout the week, I will set aside

specific blocks of time each week to respond to your submitted questions and comments.

Course website: www.earthatlast/envhist/future.edu

Course DescriptionEnvironmental history has emerged over the past thirty years as a vital and exciting new way of studying the past. If one of the most powerful narratives of environmental history is the progressive triumph of human beings over the physical environment, then grasping how these narratives are formed – what sources of evidence and data are used, which interpretive techniques are at work, where certain ideological frameworks come from – can vastly improve our understanding of contemporary resource issues. This interdisciplinary seminar will introduce and engage some of the major debates in the field, discuss different analytical frameworks, and evaluate types of traditional and innovative sources. We will examine the tools, techniques, and tropes of environmental history not only by interrogating its prevailing assumptions and predominant themes, but also by investigating its methods. Selected topics and activities include exploring narrative strategies; deconstructing imagery on film and on canvas; using maps; questioning material culture; reading the landscape; and developing scientific literacy.

We will direct our investigation of American environmental history with a set of three key intersecting questions. First, how has the entire range of human activities relied on and interacted with the natural world? In other words, in what ways do natural resources and phenomena shape human lives in different regions? An equally pressing concern is how those dynamics are predicated upon social-, racial-, or gender-mediated differences. Second, how are cultural and political attitudes and beliefs influenced by changing perceptions, meanings, and interpretations of nature? Finally, in what ways have humans reshaped the American landscape, and what are the consequences of these alterations for natural and human communities, as well as the power relations between them?

Each session will be divided between seminar style discussion and a workshop style practicum that focuses on the craft of devising, planning, writing, and revising a work of history of your own creation. We will consider the building blocks of historical research from an environmental perspective by excavating the fundamentals of sound research methods, library skills, and writing techniques.

Course GoalsThe central purpose of this course is to improve your ability to think historically and conceptually about nature – as a physical entity and a set of evolving ideas – from a perspective rooted in and balanced between the arts, humanities, and science. Juggling scientific and technical concerns with the ability to place events and ideas in their historical context is key to learning how to synthesize factual details, account for discrepancies in sources, and applying this knowledge to support your interpretation in a scholarly, persuasive manner.

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Another major goal of this course is to introduce you to the interdisciplinary and specialized field of environmental history as a way to improve your skills – orally and in writing – for inquiring about, contextualizing, and analyzing a variety of media viewed from an environmental angle. By examining different kinds of material that bridges the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences, you will also increase your level of exposure to and comfort in dealing with the complexity, ambiguity, and uncertainty in human affairs and ecosystems.

A no less important goal of this seminar is to develop proficiency and technical skills in the art and practice of writing environmental history. The Writing Practicum is a series of workshops designed to lay the foundation for, build upon, and inhabit an intellectual and creative dwelling in which you will be able to identify, engage, and write successful history about topics of your choosing and interest.

Student ResponsibilitiesUltimately, this educational experience is your own and I am here to help you make the most of it. At its best, the study of history cuts across the grain of conventional wisdom, challenges staid or stagnant interpretations, undermines cherished assumptions, and erodes stereotypes. At its worst it reads like dense, undercooked pudding, tastes no better, and serves as a fact-finding exercise. I organized the materials and structure of this course with this tension in mind. Nevertheless, if something is not clear or you have ideas about how to improve a week’s theme, I am responsive to constructive feedback, an important adaptability you too will develop in response to feedback on your written work. I ask that you think seriously and creatively about history as a means to debate the meanings of texts, to analyze the judgment of authors and artists, and to engage the opinions of your peers.

Course Requirements, in brief (grading schema and assignment details follow preliminary schedule)

Regular attendance and participationLeading class discussion (Oral presentation and handout)Four short (500 word) response papersAnnotated bibliographyProspectus and thesis statement (3-4 pp.)Research paper first draftFinal research paper (12-15 pp.)Oral presentation (15 minute) of final research project

Readings (books and course packet)Books

William Rathje and Cullen Murphy, Rubbish: The Archaeology of Garbage (Tuscon, Arizona: The University of Arizona Press, 2001).

James Deetz, In Small Things Forgotten: An Archaeology of Early American Life (New York: Doubleday, 1996, expanded and revised edition).

Jules David Prown et al. Discovered Lands Invented Pasts: Transforming Visions of the American West, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992).

Barbara Novak, Nature and Culture: American Landscape Painting 1825-1875 (Oxford University Press, 1980, 1995).

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Donald Worster, The Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979).

Arthur F. McEvoy, The Fisherman’s Problem: Ecology and Law in the California Fisheries, 1850-1980 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986).

Andrew Isenberg, The Destruction of the Bison: An Environmental History, 1750-1920 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000).

Course Packet Available at your local photocopy center.

Recommended texts:Good reference works for citation, style, and study design include The Chicago Manual of Style, Kate Turabian’s A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations, the MLA Handbook, and W. C. Booth, G.G. Colomb, and J. M. Williams, The Craft of Research (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995). Because this is a writing intensive course, I strongly recommend you consult – or better yet, purchase – the following primers and guides on writing: William Strunk, Jr. and E. B. White, The Elements of Style 4th ed. (New York: Macmillan,

19__). William Zinsser, On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction 6th ed. (New

York: Harper Perennial, 1976, 1998).For the grammatically challenged or linguistically adventurous, Karen Elizabeth Gordon’s The Deluxe Transitive Vampire: The Ultimate Handbook of Grammar for the Innocent, the Eager, and the Doomed is a worthwhile reference and coffee table book.

Preliminary scheduleReadings followed by a bold (O) are available online. (P) connotes readings included in the

course packet.

WEEK 1Doing Environmental History: Overview and Introduction

Reading (64 pp.) Donald Worster, “Appendix: Doing Environmental History,” in Donald Worster ed., The

Ends of the Earth: Perspectives on Modern Environmental History (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988): 289-307. (P) (18)

David Hackett Fischer, Historians’ Fallacies: Toward a Logic of Historical Thought (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1970): 307-318. (P) (12)

William Cronon, “The Uses of Environmental History,” Environmental History Review 17 (Fall 1993): 1-22. (P) (22)

William Cronon, “The View From Walden,” in Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England (New York: Hill and Wang, 1983): 3-15. (P) (12)

Writing PracticumTowards choosing a topic

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WEEK 2Narrative and Environmental History I:

Declension, Determinism, and Contingency

Response paper # 1 due

Reading (154 pp.) William Cronon, “A Place for Stories: Nature, History, and Narrative,” The Journal of

American History 78 (March, 1992) 4: 1347-1376. (O) (29) William Cronon, “Kennecott Journey: The Paths out of Town,” in William Cronon, George

Miles, and Jay Gitlin, eds., Under an Open Sky: Rethinking America’s Western Past (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1992):28-51. (P) (23)

François Furet, “From narrative history to problem-oriented history,” in François Furet translated by Jonathan Mandelbaum, In the workshop of history (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984):54-67. (P) (13)

John McPhee, “Atchafalaya,” in The Control of Nature (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1983): 3-92. (P) (89)

Writing PracticumHistory workshop: Thinking historically with primary and secondary materials

WEEK 3Narrative and Environmental History II:

The Reality Effect

Response paper # 2 due

Reading (74 pp.) Peter Mathiessen, Wildlife in America (New York: Penguin Books, 1959, 1987): 19—33. (P)

(14) Alan Lightman, Einstein’s Dreams (New York: Warner Books, 1993): 3-7, 8-12, 23-27, 38-

42, 61-66, 102-106. (P) (28) A. R. Louch, History as Narrative,” History and Theory 8 (1969) 1: 54-70. (16) James West Davidson, “The New Narrative History: How New? How Narrative,” Reviews in

American History (September 1984):322-334. (P) (10) Richard J. Evans, “The Future of History,: Prospect (October 1997): 1-6. (P) (6)

Writing PracticumLevels of Meaning / Point of View / Creative Liberties / Writing Techniques and Preferences

WEEK 4Research Literacy and Library Skills

During class time meet at Merrill Library for Research Workshop

WEEK 5Inherited Ideas and the Natural Imagination: Telling Tales on Canvas

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Annotated bibliography due

Reading (187 pp.) Jules David Prown et al. Discovered Lands Invented Pasts: Transforming Visions of the

American West, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992): Jules David Prown, xi-xv; Nancy K. Anderson, “’Curious Historical Artistic Data’: Art History and Western American Art,” 1-36; William Cronon, “Telling Tales on Canvas: Landscapes of Frontier Change, 37-88; Martha A. Sandweiss, “The Public Life of Western Art,” 117-135. (108)

Barbara Novak, Nature and Culture: American Landscape Painting 1825-1875 (Oxford University Press, 1980, 1995): 137-200. (63)

Ann Shelby Blum, “Animal Pictures and Natural History,” in Picturing Nature: American Nineteenth-Century Zoological Illustration (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1993): 3-19. (P) (16)

Writing PracticumThinking about interpretation

WEEK 6Through the Eye of the Beholder: Photography and Rephotography

Reading (156 pp. and view folio of images on class website) Marsha Peters and Bernard Mergen, “‘Doing the Rest:’ The Uses of Photographs in

American Studies,” American Quarterly XXIX (1977) 3: 280-303. (P) (23) Mary Meagher and Douglas B. Houston, Yellowstone and the Biology of Time: Photographs

Across a Century (Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998). Preface (xiii-xiv), Introduction (7-12), Plates, (226-252), Appendix 2: Summary of Vegetation Changes Shown by Photo Comparisons. (R) (7 text)

Estelle Jussim and Elizabeth Lindquist-Cock, “Landscape as Politics and Propaganda,” in Landscape as Photograph (Yale University Press: New Haven, 1985): 137-149.(P) (12)

Eduardo Cadava, “Lapsus Imaginis: The Image in Ruins,” October Magazine (Spring 2001): 35-60. (P) (25)

E. H. Gombrich, “The Evidence of Images,” in Charles S. Singleton, ed., Interpretation: Theory and Practice (Baltimore, Maryland: The John Hopkins Press, 1969): 35-56. (P) (21)

Greg Mitman, “Wildlife Conservation Through a Wide-Angle Lens,” in Reel Nature: America’s Romance with Wildlife on Film (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1999): 85-108. (P) (23)

Ann Shelby Blum, “The Lens and the Line: Photography and Microscopy,” in Picturing Nature: American Nineteenth-Century Zoological Illustration (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1993): 265-317. (P) (52)

start reading Dust Bowl for next week!

Writing PracticumAnalyzing evidence

WEEK 7Cartographic Controversy: How to read maps

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Prospectus and thesis statement due

Reading ( 325 pp.) Mark Monmonier, How to Lie with Maps (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996):

Foreword xi-xii, 1-4, 184-186. (P) (9)

Gregory H. Nobles, “Straight Lines and Stability: Mapping the Political Order of the Anglo-American Frontier,” The Journal of American History 80 (June, 1993) 1: 9-35. (O) (26)

J. B. Harley, “Maps, knowledge, and power,” in Denis Cosgrove and Stephen Daniels, eds. The Iconography of Landscape: Essays on the symbolic representation, design and use of past environments ( New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988): 277-312. (P) (35)

Case Study Donald Worster, The Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s (New York: Oxford

University Press, 1979). skim for argument (243) Geoff Cunfer, “Causes of the Dust Bowl,” in Anne Kelly Knowles, ed., Past Time Past

Place: GIS for History (Redlands, California: ESRI, 2002): 93-105. (P) (12)

Writing PracticumOutlining options

WEEK 8Flotsam and Jetsam: Gleaning the Material World

Reading (130 pp.) Jules David Prown, “Mind in Matter: An Introduction to Material Culture Theory and

Method,” Winterthur Portfolio 17 (Spring, 1982): 1-19. (P) (18) William Rathje and Cullen Murphy, Rubbish: The Archaeology of Garbage (Tuscon,

Arizona: The University of Arizona Press, 2001). (excerpts) “Recalling Things Forgotten: Archaeology and the American Artifact,” “I would have the

howse stronge in timber,” “the African American past,” and “small things forgotten,” in James Deetz, In Small Things Forgotten: An Archaeology of Early American Life (New York: Doubleday, 1996, expanded and revised edition): 1-27, 125-164, 212-252, 253-260.

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Writing PracticumWriting and responding to drafts

WEEK 9Reading the Landscape

DRAFTS DUE

Reading (95pp.)

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D. W. Meinig, ed., The Interpretation of Ordinary Landscapes (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979): Introduction, 1-6; Peirce F. Lewis, “Axioms for Reading the Landscapes: Some Guides to the American Scene,” 11-32; D. W. Meinig, “The Beholding Eye: Ten Versions of the Same Scene,” 33-48; D. W. Meinig, “Symbolic Landscapes: Some Idealizations of American Communities,” 164-192. (P) (70)

Stephen Daniels Denis and Cosgrove, “Introduction,” in Denis Cosgrove and Stephen Daniels, eds. The Iconography of Landscape: Essays on the symbolic representation, design and use of past environments ( New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988): 1-10. (P) (10)

D. M. J. S. Bowman, “Future eating and country keeping: what role has environmental (15) history in the management of biodiversity,” Journal of Biography 28 (2001): 549-564.(O)

WEEK 10Scientific Literacy

Reading (184 pp.) Andrew Isenberg, The Destruction of the Bison: An Environmental History, 1750-1920 (New

York: Cambridge University Press, 2000): 1-30, 63-163, 193-198. (135) Yrjö Haila, “Measuring Nature: Quantitative Data in Field Biology,” in Adele E. Clarke and

Joan H. Fujimura, eds., The Right Tools for the Job: At Work in Twentieth-Century Life Sciences (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1992): 233-253. (P) (20)

Simon Levin, “The problem of pattern and scale in ecology,” Ecology 73 (1992) 6: 1943-1967. (P) (24)

A. B. Hill and I. D. Hill, Bradford Hill’s principles of medical statistics, 12th edn (London: Edward Arnold, 1991): 272-277. (P) (5)

Writing PracticumFrom paper to presentation

WEEK 11Tragic Myths: Revisting the Question of the Commons

Reading (286 pp.) Arthur F. McEvoy, The Fisherman’s Problem: Ecology and Law in the California Fisheries,

1850-1980 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 1-247. (247) Garret Hardin, “The Tragedy of the Commons,” Science 162 (1968): 1243-1248. (P) (6) Bonnie J. McCay and James M. Acheson, “Human Ecology of the Commons,” in Bonnie J.

McCay and James M. Acheson, eds., The Question of the Commons: The Culture and Ecology of Communal Resources (Tuscon, Arizona: The University of Arizona Press, 1987): 1-34. (P) (33)

WEEK 12Student Presentations: Final Research Presentations

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WEEK 13Student Presentations: Final Research Presentations

FINAL PAPERS DUE AT BEGINNING OF CLASS

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Course requirements, grading, and assignments2. Participation and attendance (20% of the grade)

Participation in seminar discussions is required. Attendance will count for 10%, and participation 15%. Please note that participation is more than just opening your mouth for the sake of saying something. It is being prepared to engagingly discuss the assigned readings. The success of the seminar requires that each participant articulate and be able to defend her / his ideas, as well as listen carefully and respectfully to the questions, concerns, and ideas of others.

Leading Discussion / class handoutEach week, one or two people (depending on class size) will be responsible for starting off our classroom discussion. If you are paired with someone, the two of you will be expected to collaborate. You are responsible for isolating key words, concepts, or images from the week’s reading. You might address overarching questions or present materials / perspectives missing from the class. Each person should speak for ONLY 5-7 minutes before opening the conversation up to the seminar or moving on to a specific activity. If leading discussion singly, your handout should be limited to one page. If presenting as a pair, your handout should be a maximum of two pages. Plan to meet with me during office hours at least one week in advance before you are scheduled to lead discussion. Leading discussion is considered part of participation. Creativity is always encouraged. To be clear, class participation will be evaluated according to the following criteria:



You will earn a “C” for refusing to participate in discussion. If however, you are clinically or painfully shy, or feel you may better participate in alternative ways, please contact me. A grade lower than a “C” will be given to anyone that is consistently unprepared, silent, absent, or unproductively disruptive.

2. Four short (500 word) response papers (15% of the grade)For week two and three of the semester, you are required to submit short response papers. Due the Monday before class by 5 PM, these pieces are intended as a response to the materials, and as such may be impressionistic or journalistic in style and tone. Engaging the readings for the week, they may be reflective, exploratory, or personal. The remaining two response papers, due any time before week 12, should directly address the central issues of the week’s readings and must make an analytical argument about the texts. You might

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address the author’s methods, question a work’s organization, unearth hidden assumptions, or challenge the author’s conclusions.

3. Annotated Bibliography (5% of the grade)Based on the topic you have selected, you should submit an annotated bibliography at the beginning of week 5. Basically, this is an opportunity for you to identify primary materials and secondary sources relevant to your project and begin to place them in conversation with your central research questions and each other. I will look for a minimum of three primary sources and between 8-12 secondary sources. Each source should stimulate a few sentences (no more) regarding its relevance to you project, questions raised, or challenges posed.

4. Prospectus and thesis statement (5% of the grade)At the beginning of class during week 7, you will hand in a brief (3-4) page historiographical essay on your topic. In addition to providing a summary and synthesis of the secondary reading you have completed to this point, you will describe in some detail the primary data you are using and outline a preliminary sketch of your argument.

5. Research paper first draft (15% of the grade)A first draft of your final project is due week 9.

6. Final research paper (30% of the grade)This project is your chance to synthesize the material covered in this course through your own engagement with the assigned readings and your own research. Papers should incorporate one or more of the broader themes of the semester and integrate your chosen topic with one or more of the assigned texts. In addition to using relevant secondary sources, you are expected to incorporate primary historical data – diaries, newspapers, maps, photographs, images, government reports – into the structure of your argument.

7. Oral presentation (10% of the grade)Often the tangible products of work we do in an academic setting are restricted to papers and other written assignments. This presentation is a way to parlay the sum of your significant efforts over the course of the semester into a presentation intended for a broad audience. Creativity is greatly encouraged, and multi-media materials are not only allowable, but desirable. Each student will speak for 10-15 minutes, taking care to emphasize the methods he /she used as they pertain to the discussion we have had throughout the semester. A workshop during week 9 will prepare you in greater detail.

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Draft 23 May 20234:41 PM

Environment and Equity in North AmericaSpring Semester 2004Instructor: Barry Ross Muchnick

Seminar Time and Location: Thursday, 1:00 – 3:30 p.m., 208 Woodbridge HallOffice Hours: 2:00-3:00 M, W and by appointmentEmail office hours: [email protected] M, W, F (3:00-4:00 p.m.)

Though I check my email constantly throughout the week, I will set aside specific blocks of time each week to respond to your submitted questions and comments.

Course DescriptionEnvironmental racism is not a recent phenomena. Nor is the concept of environmental justice a new development. Though events in the 1980s sparked heated debate about the friction between race, ethnicity, class, and the distribution of environmental costs and benefits, this course will argue that environmental justice has a history in North America that originates not in the 1980s but rather in the 1890s and earlier. We will explore the parallel and oftentimes divergent histories of environmental and social justice movements by exploding the process whereby assumptions about people and the natural world are created, naturalized, socialized, and adopted by political movements. Among the topics we will explore are the expulsion of Native Americans from public lands; the early phases of scientific racism; the role of gender and class conflict in defining conservation policies; the rise of domestic democratic movements; the impoverishment of agricultural communities; and the twin presence of corporations and the government in the realm of pollution and public health. In addition to introducing the work of community organizers, scholars, and activists, this seminar will examine the ways environmental justice broadly construed can redefine our fundamental definitions of “nature,” “culture,” and “environment.”

In addition to writing short critical response papers and developing a major historical research paper, you will participate in a service learning project which allows you to apply the insights, perspectives, and skills you gain over the course of the semester to a contemporary environmental and/or social justice issue. In each seminar we will divide our time between a rigorous and challenging discussion of the weeks assigned materials and a writing/research workshop. A series of workshops will guide you through the process of identifying a question, finding evidence, articulating a thesis, and writing the research paper. Similarly, a schedule for the service learning project will help spread the work over the semester.

Course GoalsOne major purpose of this course is to introduce you to the interdisciplinary and specialized field of environmental history as a way to improve your ability to think critically and historically. Along the way you will develop skills – orally and in writing – for inquiring about, contextualizing, and analyzing a variety of media viewed from an environmental angle. By examining material that bridges the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences, you will also increase your level of exposure to and comfort in dealing with the complexity, ambiguity, and uncertainty in human affairs and ecosystems. Not only will you learn about how facts, figures and trends fit into major themes of North American history, but you will also learn how to think critically and historically.

An equally important goal of this seminar is to develop proficiency and technical skills in the art and practice of writing environmental history. Furthermore, you will have the opportunity to put your work to work, so to speak, and use your talents as a historian to help your community.

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Student ResponsibilitiesUltimately, this educational experience is your own and I am here to help you make the most of it. At its best, the study of history cuts across the grain of conventional wisdom, challenges staid or stagnant interpretations, undermines cherished assumptions, and erodes stereotypes. At its worst it reads like dense, undercooked pudding, tastes no better, and serves as a fact-finding exercise. I organized the materials and structure of this course with this tension in mind. Nevertheless, if something is not clear or you have ideas about how to improve a week’s theme, I am responsive to constructive feedback, an important adaptability you too will develop in response to feedback on your written work. I ask that you think seriously and creatively about history as a means to debate the meanings of texts, to analyze the judgment of authors and artists, and to engage the opinions of your peers.

Course Requirements(grading schema and assignment details follow preliminary schedule)Attendance and participation 20%

Leading class discussion (Oral presentation and handout)

Two short (4-5 pp.) critical response papers 20%Service learning project 25%Final research paper (12-15 pp.) 25%Service learning project presentation 10%

100%

Required Readings (books and course packet)Books Robert D. Bullard, Confronting Environmental Racism: Voices from the Grassroots (Boston,

Massachusetts: South End Press, 1993). Karl Jacoby, Crimes Against Nature: Nature: Squatters, Poachers, Thieves, and the Hidden

History of American Conservation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001). Mark David Spence, Dispossessing the Wilderness: Indian Removal and the Making of the

National Parks (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999). Temma Kaplan, Crazy for Democracy: Women in Grassroots Movements (New York:

Routledge, 1997). Kathryn M. Mutz, Gary C. Bryner, and Douglas S. Kenney, eds., Justice and Natural

Resources: Concepts, Strategies, and Applications (Washington, D. C.: Island Press, 2002). Jace Weaver, ed., Defending Mother Earth: Native American Perspectives on Environmental

Justice (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1996). Richard White, Roots of Dependence: Subsistence, Environment, and Social Change among

the Choctaws, Pawnees, and Navajos (Lincoln : University of Nebraska Press, 1983). Osha Gray Davidson, Broken Heartland: The Rise of America’s Rural Ghetto (Iowa City:

University of Iowa Press, 1996).

Course Packet: Available at your local photocopy store

Recommended texts:Good reference works for citation, style, and study design include The Chicago Manual of Style, Kate Turabian’s A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations, the MLA Handbook, and W. C. Booth, G.G. Colomb, and J. M. Williams, The Craft of Research (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995). Because this is a writing intensive course, I strongly recommend you consult – or better yet, purchase – the following primers and guides on writing:

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Draft 23 May 20234:41 PM William Strunk, Jr. and E. B. White, The Elements of Style (INFORMATION, YEAR) William Zinsser, On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction 6th ed. (New

York: Harper Perennial, 1976, 1998).For the grammatically challenged or linguistically adventurous, Karen Elizabeth Gordon’s The Deluxe Transitive Vampire: The Ultimate Handbook of Grammar for the Innocent, the Eager, and the Doomed is a worthwhile reference and coffee table book.

Preliminary scheduleReadings followed by a bold (O) are available online. (P) connotes readings included in the

course packet.

WEEK 1Red, White, and Blue – Please meet Green, Brown, and Black

Introduction and Overview

Reading (55 pp.) Gerald Torres, “Foreword,” David H. Getches and David N. Pellow, “Beyond ‘Traditional’

Environmental Justice,” in Kathryn M. Mutz, Gary C. Bryner, and Douglas S. Kenney, eds., Justice and Natural Resources: Concepts, Strategies, and Applications (Washington, D. C.: Island Press, 2002): xxi-xxviii, 1-30. (38)

Patricia Nelson Limerick, “Hoping Against History: Environmental Justice in the Twenty-first Century,” in Kathryn M. Mutz, Gary C. Bryner, and Douglas S. Kenney, eds., Justice and Natural Resources: Concepts, Strategies, and Applications (Washington, D. C.: Island Press, 2002): 337-354. (17)

Start reading Roots of Dependency for next week

Workshop: Writing Preferences and Intellectual Power: Writing your own ticket

WEEK 2Inventing Otherness in Colonial America

Reading (153 pp.) Richard White, Roots of Dependence: Subsistence, Environment, and Social Change

among the Choctaws, Pawnees, and Navajos (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983): 16-146. (130)

Joyce Chaplin, “Natural Philosophy and an Early Racial Idiom in North America: Comparing English and Indian Bodies,” William and Mary Quarterly 54 (January 1997): 229-252.(P)(29)

Workshop: Sources and topics

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WEEK 3Scientism and Environmentalism

Select service learning topics and teams

Reading (143 pp.) Robert R. Berkhofer, Jr., The White Man’s Indian: Images of the American Indian from

Columbus to the Present (New York: Vintage Books): 1-70. (P) (70) William Stanton, “An Universal Freckle” in The Leopard’s Spots: Scientific Attitudes Toward

Race in America, 1815-1859 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960): 1-14. (P) (14) Josiah C, Nott and George R. Gliddon, Indigenous Races of the Earth; or New Chapters of

Ethnological Inquiry (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott and Company, 1857): 353-368, 399-401, 638-650. (P) (30)

Karl Jacoby, "Slaves by Nature? Domestic Animals and Human Slaves,” Slavery and Abolition 15 (April 1994): 88-99. (P) (11)

Mart A. Stewart, “Rice, Water, and Power: Landscapes of Domination and Resistance in the Low Country, 1790-1880,” Environmental History Review 15 (Fall 1991): 47-64. (P) (17)

Workshop: Meetings to talk about topics

WEEK 4Conservation Contradictions: Native People and National Parks

Response paper # 1 due on or before this date

Reading (203 pp) Mark David Spence, Dispossessing the Wilderness: Indian Removal and the Making of the

National Parks (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999): 1-139. (139) Richard White, Roots of Dependency, 147-211. (64)

Workshop: Historiography and secondary sources – How to frame your research

WEEK 5Tribal Tribulations: Social and Natural Resources in the Twentieth Century

Annotated bibliography due

Reading (114 pp.) Jace Weaver, “Notes from a Miner’s Canary,” Donald Fixico, “The Struggle for Our Homes,”

Grace Thorpe, “Our Homes Are Not Dumps,” Justine Smith, “Custer Rides Again – This Time on the Exxon Valdez: Mining Issues in Wisconsin,” Margaret Sam-Cromarty, “Family Closeness: Will James Bay Be Only a Memory for My Grandchildren?,” Jace Weaver, “Triangulated Power and the Environment” Tribes, the Federal Government, and the States,” in Jace Weaver, ed., Defending Mother Earth: Native American Perspectives on Environmental Justice (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1996): 1-28, 29-46, 47-58, 59-71, 99-106,107-121. (92)

Sarah Krakoff, “Tribal Sovereignty and Environmental Justice,” in Kathryn M. Mutz, Gary C. Bryner, and Douglas S. Kenney, eds., Justice and Natural Resources: Concepts, Strategies, and Applications (Washington, D. C.: Island Press, 2002):161-183. (22)

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Workshop: Arguments, analyses, and antecedents: positioning your paper

WEEK 6Women, Whiteness, and Working Class Wilderness:

Love Canal and the Legality of Discrimination

Reading (164 pp.) Karl Jacoby, Crimes Against Nature: Nature: Squatters, Poachers, Thieves, and the Hidden

History of American Conservation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001): 1-48, 149-198. (97)

Dorceta E. Taylor, “Environmentalism and the Politics of Inclusion,” in Robert D. Bullard ed., Confronting Environmental Racism: Voices from the Grassroots (Boston, Massachusetts: South End Press, 1993): 53-61. (9)

James L. Wescoat Jr., Sarah Halvorson, Lisa Headington, and Jill Replogle, “Water, Poverty, Equity, and Justice in Colorado,” in Kathryn M. Mutz, Gary C. Bryner, and Douglas S. Kenney, eds., Justice and Natural Resources: Concepts, Strategies, and Applications (Washington, D. C.: Island Press, 2002): 57-86. (28)

“Suburban Blight and Situation Comedy,” in Temma Kaplan, Crazy for Democracy: Women in Grassroots Movements (New York: Routledge, 1997): 15-45 (P) (30)

Workshop: Annotated Bibliography Due

WEEK 7Home front Movements and Domestic Democracy

Prospectus and thesis statement due

Reading ( 132 pp.) Robert Gottlieb, “Reconstructing Environmentalism: Complex Movements, Diverse Roots,”

Environmental History Review 17 (1993) 4:1-20. (P) (20) Dorceta E. Taylor, “American Environmentalism: The Role of Race, Class and Gender in

Shaping Activism, 1820-1995, Race, Gender & Class 5 (1997) 1: 16-62. (P) (46) “Introduction: Women Prophets and the Struggle for Human Rights,” “Suburban Blight and

Situation Comedy,” “‘When it rains, I get mad and scared’: Women and Environmental Racism,” “Homemaker Citizens and New Democratic Organizations,” “Conclusion: Social Movements and Democratic Practices,” in Temma Kaplan, Crazy for Democracy: Women in Grassroots Movements (New York: Routledge, 1997): 1-14, 47-72, 73-101, 179-189. (P) (36)

Robert D. Bullard, “Introduction,” and “Anatomy of Environmental Racism and the Environmental Justice Movement,” in Confronting Environmental Racism: Voices from the Grassroots (Boston, Massachusetts: South End Press, 1993): 7-13, 15-39. (30)

Workshop: Re-envisioning and remembering the null hypothesis

WEEK 8The Pastoral Ghetto

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Response paper # 2 due on or before this dateService learning project interim report due

Reading (183 pp.) Osha Gray Davidson, Broken Heartland: The Rise of America’s Rural Ghetto (Iowa City:

University of Iowa Press, 1996): 1-184. (183)Optional Reading Frederick H. Buttel and William L. Flinn, “The Interdependence of Rural and Urban

Environmental Problems in Advanced Capitalist Societies: Models of Linkage, “ Sociologia Ruralis 17 (1977): 255-279. (P) (24)

Workshop: Prospectus and Thesis Statement Due

WEEK 9Industrial Exploitation, Urban Outrage, and the Politics of Pollution

Research paper drafts due

Reading ( 91 pp.) Martin V. Melosi, “Environmental Crisis in the City: The Relationship between

Industrialization and Urban Pollution,” in Martin V. Melosi, ed., Pollution and Reform in American Cities, 1870-1930 (Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, 1980, 3-34. (P) (33)

Cynthia Hamilton, “Coping with Industrial Exploitation,” Robert W. Collin and William Harris, Sr., “Race and Waste in Two Virginia Communities,” Conner Bailey, Charles E. Faupel, and James H. Gundlach, “Environmental Politics in Alabama’s Blackbelt,” Marion Moses, “Farmworkers and Pesticides,” in Robert D. Bullard, Confronting Environmental Racism: Voices from the Grassroots (Boston, Massachusetts: South End Press, 1993):63-76, 93-106, 107-122, 161-178. (58)

Workshop: Opening the Mind’s Window: Drafting and reiterating iteration

WEEK 10The Political Ecology of Ethnicity

Reading (175 pp.) Richard Hansis, “A Political Ecology of Picking: Non-Timber Forest Products in the Pacific

Northwest,” Human Ecology 26 (1998) 1: 67-86. (P) (19) Laura Pulido, “Sustainable Development at Ganados del Valle,” Devon Peña and Joseph

Gallegos, “Nature and Chicanos in Southern Colorado,” in Robert D. Bullard, Confronting Environmental Racism: Voices from the Grassroots (Boston, Massachusetts: South End Press, 1993); 123-139, 141-160. (36)

Eric K. Yamamoto and Jen-L W. Lyman, “Racializing Environmental Justice,” University of Colorado Law Review 72 (Spring 2001): 311 – 360. excerpts

Richard White, Roots of Dependency, 212-314. (102)

WEEK 11

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Justice for All: Wilderness and CivilizationReading The Wilderness Act (excerpts) The Civil Rights Act (excerpts)

Final Draft Papers Due

Workshop: Reverse Outlining and the peer review

WEEK 12Working the World: Corporations, the State, and Subaltern Response to Globalization

Reading (125 pp.) Steve Marquardt, “Green Havoc: Panama Disease, Environmental Change, and Labor Process

in the Central American Banana Industry, American Historical Review 106 (February 2001) 1:49-80. (P) (31)

Nancy J. Jacobs, “The Great Bophuthatatswana Donkey Massacre: Discourse on the Ass and the Politics of Class and Grass,” American Historical Review 106 (April 2001) 2: 485-507. (O) (22)

Ramanchandra Guha, “A Sociology of Domination and Resistance,” “Scientific Forestry and Social Change,” and “Rebellion as Confrontation,” in Ramanchandra Guha ed., The Unquiet Woods: Ecological Change and Peasant Resistance in the Himalaya rev. ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000): 1-8, 35-61, 99-137. (P) (72)

WEEK 13Re-envisioning Environmentalism: Social Justice and Environmental Equity

Reading (35 pp.) Giovanna Di Chiro, “Nature as Community: The Convergence of Environment and Social

Justice,” in William Cronon, ed., Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature (W. W. Norton & Company, 1996): 298-320. (P) (22)

Alan Taylor, Unnatural Inequalities: Social and Environmental Histories,” Environmental History (YEAR): 6-19. (P) (13)

FINAL PAPERS DUE AT THE BEGINNING OF CLASSSERVICE LEARNING REPORT DUE

Course requirements, grading, and assignments3. Attendance and participation (20% of the grade)

Attendance will count for 10%, and participation 15%. You are expected to attend all seminar meetings and arrive prepared to engage with the readings for that week. Additionally, there will be several in-class writing assignments, ranging from your response to the assigned texts to personal reflections on the course material. Please note that participation is more than just opening your mouth for the sake of saying something. It is being prepared to engagingly discuss the assigned readings. The success of the seminar requires that each participant articulate and be able to defend her / his ideas, as well as listen carefully and respectfully to the questions, concerns, and ideas of others.

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Leading Discussion / class handoutEach week, one or two people (depending on class size) will be responsible for starting off our classroom discussion. If you are paired with someone, the two of you will be expected to collaborate. You are responsible for isolating key words, concepts, or images from the week’s reading. You might address overarching questions or present materials / perspectives missing from the class. Each person should speak for ONLY 5-7 minutes before opening the conversation up to the seminar or moving on to a specific activity. If leading discussion singly, your handout should be limited to one page. If presenting as a pair, your handout should be a maximum of two pages. Plan to meet with me during office hours at least one week in advance before you are scheduled to lead discussion. Leading discussion is considered part of participation. Creativity is always encouraged. To be clear, class participation will be evaluated according to the following criteria:




2. Two short (4-5 pp.) response papers (20% of the grade)In each paper you will critically analyze the major reading for a given week. One paper is due before week 4, and the other is due before week eight. For both papers, you are strongly encouraged to incorporate other readings, discussions, and experiences. Remember, these pieces are thesis driven. The goal is to analyze, not to summarize. It is important to use concrete examples and evidence to support the answer to a question you pose about the materials. I am interested in your interpretation and response to historical scholarship in general, and in particular to your chosen texts.

3. Service learning project (30%)This project enables you to synthesize the material learned in this course through an application of your own research on behalf of a community or campus partner. Together with a small team of you peers, you will provide information and analysis on a particular environmental justice issue for a local non-profit organization, working educational farm, or a campus organization. All projects will involve substantial, in-depth research, writing and in some cases, technical (mapping or GIS work) skills. You will select your project from a list of potential topics / partnerships and work on it all term along with your teammates and the

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organization representative. I will provide more details on this assignment later in the term, but here are some preliminary deadlines and requirements.

WEEK 3: select topics and teams WEEK 8: Interim progress report (2-3 pp.) due to partner and me WEEK 13: Final materials due to partner and me Public presentation of each team’s work during exam week

4. Final research paper (30% of the grade)A research paper is a work in progress. Accordingly, the final paper is best understood as a series of steps designed not only to create the finest possible finished product but also to highlight the importance of the writing process. Papers should incorporate one or more of the broader themes of the semester and integrate your chosen topic with one or more of the assigned texts. In addition to using relevant secondary sources, you are expected to incorporate primary historical data – diaries, newspapers, maps, photographs, images, government reports – into the structure of your argument. The research paper is broken down into stages to reduce end-of-term-overload and

Annotated Bibliography (5%) Based on the topic you have selected, you should submit an annotated bibliography at the beginning of week 5. Basically, this is an opportunity for you to identify primary materials and secondary sources relevant to your project and begin to place them in conversation with your central research questions and each other. I will look for a minimum of three primary sources and between 8-12 secondary sources. Each source should stimulate a few sentences (no more) regarding its relevance to you project, questions raised, or challenges posed.

Prospectus and thesis statement (5%) At the beginning of class during week 7, you will hand in a brief (3-4) page historiographical essay on your topic. In addition to providing a summary and synthesis of the secondary reading you have completed to this point, you will describe in some detail the primary data you are using and outline a preliminary sketch of your argument.

Research paper first draft (10%) A first draft of your final project is due week 9.

Final draft (10%) Due at the beginning of class during week 11

7. Service learning project presentation (10% of the grade)Often the tangible products of work we do in an academic setting are restricted to papers and other written assignments. This presentation is a way to parlay the sum of your significant efforts over the course of the semester into a presentation intended for a broad audience. Creativity is greatly encouraged, and multi-media materials are not only allowable, but desirable. Each team will speak for roughly 20 minutes, taking care to contextualize the research agenda within the body of literature and praxis we have covered during the semester. Your peers, the partners, and I will provide feedback on the presentation.

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Routes of Travel: Travel Narratives and Environmental HistoryFall Semester 2003Barry Ross Muchnick

Seminar Time and Location: Wednesday, 1:00 – 3:30 p.m., 028 Leyland PlaceOffice Hours: 2-3 M, W and by appointmentEmail office hours: [email protected] M, W, F (3-4 p.m.)

Though I check my email constantly throughout the week, I will set aside specific blocks of time each week to respond to your submitted questions and

comments.

Course DescriptionYou will embark on several journeys during the course of the semester. First, you will travel back in time through hundreds of years of North American landscape, encountering drastically different ecologies, perspectives, and styles of writing and recording events. Along the way you will encounter significant moments in American history, as well as the ideological underpinnings of many widely-held assumptions about human and animal migrations. Second, you will journey through an intellectual terrain of changing methods that travelers (and historians) have used to understand, investigate, and interpret both past and present environments.

We will explore the difference between “rootedness” and routedness” in terms of the human relationship to the natural world, and unpack the structural and technical challenges of recording and re-telling a linear expedition in narrative episodes. To understand the history of trans-continental migration is to grasp the history of how notions of region, nature, mobility, technology, transportation, and literature intersect and influence records of reality. Through written projects and oral presentations you will explore the legacy of cultural and environmental history on your own perceptions and patterns.

Student ResponsibilitiesUltimately, this educational experience is your own and I am here to help you make the

most of it. At its best, the study of history cuts across the grain of conventional wisdom, challenges staid or stagnant interpretations, undermines cherished assumptions, and erodes stereotypes. At its worst it reads like dense, undercooked pudding, tastes no better, and serves as a fact-finding exercise. I organized the materials and structure of this course with this tension in mind. Nevertheless, if something is not clear or you have ideas about how to improve a week’s theme, I am responsive to constructive feedback, an important adaptability you too will develop in response to feedback on your written work. I ask that you think seriously and creatively about history as a means to debate the meanings of texts, to analyze the judgment of authors and artists, and to engage the opinions of your peers.

I ask that you think creatively and seriously about the content of your writing. Your papers will be evaluated for the quality, concision, and poignancy of your prose as well as the range and depth of your thought. This assignment is your opportunity to engage, challenge, stretch, and incorporate or otherwise converse with the materials in this course as well as your own experience.

Please be forewarned that late essays will be marked down ½ grade for each day after the due date unless previous arrangements have been made at least one week in advance.

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Draft 23 May 20234:41 PMCourse Requirements, in brief (grading schema and assignment details follow preliminary schedule)Regular attendance and participation (seminar and screenings)Leading class discussion (Oral presentation and handout)Ten (1 page) response papersMid –term essay (5-7 pp.)Final research paper (15-17 pp)

Readings (books and course packet)Books Cabeza De Vaca, Adventures in the Unknown Interior of America, translated by Cyclone

Covey (Albuquerque, New Mexico: University of New Mexico Press, 1983). Sarah Kemble Knight, The Journal of Madam Knight with an introductory note by George

Parker Winship (New York: Peter Smith, 1704, 1935). Mark Van Doren, ed., Travels of William Bartram (Toronto, Ontario: General Publishing

Company, 1791, 1928). Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A History of Walking (New York: Verso, 2001). John Mack Faragher, Women and Men on the Overland Trail (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale

University Press, 1979). Charles Frazier, Cold Mountain (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1997). John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley: In Search of America (New York: Bantam Books,

1962). William Least Heat-Moon, River-Horse: The Logbook of a boat across America (New York:

Houghton Mifflin Company, 1999). Jon Krakauer, Into the Wild (New York: Villard Books, 1996). Scott Russell Sanders, Staying Put: Making a Home in a Restless World (Boston,

Massachusetts: Beacon Press, 1993).

Course Packet: Available at your local photocopy store

Preliminary ScheduleReadings followed by a bold (O) are available online. (P) connotes readings included in the

course packet.

WEEK 1Cardinal Directions: Space, Place, and the Ecology of Travel

No reading. Course overview and objectives; assignments and activities; format and requirements.

WEEK 2Arrivals and Departures: Bipedal Encounters and Observations of the “Other”

Reading (194 pp.)

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Draft 23 May 20234:41 PM Cabeza De Vaca, Adventures in the Unknown Interior of America, translated by Cylclone

Covey (Albuquerque, New Mexico: University of New Mexico Press, 1983): 1-143. (143) Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A History of Walking (New York: Verso, 2001): 1-13, 31-44.

(26) Jennifer L. Morgan, “’Some could Suckle over Their Shoulder’: Male Travelers, Female

Bodies, and the Gendering of Racial Ideology,” William and Mary Quarterly LIV (January 1997) 1: 167-192. (P) (25)

WEEK 3Journal Joust:

Economy and Ethnography on the Road in the Eighteenth Century

Reading ( pp.) Sarah Kemble Knight, The Journal of Madam Knight with an introductory note by George

Parker Winship (New York: Peter Smith, 1704, 1935). entire (70 small pages~~ 40) Mark Van Doren, ed., Travels of William Bartram (Toronto, Ontario: General Publishing

Company, 1791, 1928): 1-27, 64-69, 80-99, 112-153, 380-406. (118)

WEEK 4Philosophical Excursions

Evening Screening: Winged Migrations

Reading ( pp.) William Hazlitt, “On Going on a Journey,” in George Goodchild, ed., The Lore of the

Wanderer: An Open-Air Anthology (New York, Dutton, [1821], 1915): (P) PAGES Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A History of Walking (New York: Verso, 2001): 104-132, 148-

168. (48) Henry David Thoreau, “Walking” (P)

WEEK 5Life on the Trail and Urban Outings: Survival and Society En Route

Reading (145 pp.) Hans Huth, “The Poetry of Traveling,” in Nature and the American: Three Centuries of

Changing Attitudes (Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1957): 71-86. (P) (15)

John Mack Faragher, Women and Men on the Overland Trail (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1979): 1-87, 144-187. (130)

WEEK 6Viewing Nature Through a Window: Technology and Representation

Mid – term essay due in classEvening Screening: Planes, Trains, and Automobiles

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Draft 23 May 20234:41 PMReading ( pp.) Linda Nash, “The Changing Experience of Nature: Historical Encounters With a Northwest

River,” Journal of American History 84 (2000) 4: 1600-1629. (P) (29)

Wolfgang Schivelbusch, The Railway Journey: The Industrialization of Time and Space in the 19th Century, translated by Anslem Hollo (New York: Urizen, 1979). (P) excerpts

Sarah H. Gordon, Union to Passage: How the Railroads Transformed American Life, 1829-1929 (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1996): (P) excerpts

Robert Louis Stevenson, “Across the Plains,” in Across the Plains with other Memories and Essays (New York:, 1905): (P) PAGES

WEEK 7Fictive Footsteps: Fiction, History, and the Metaphysics of Movement

Reading (356 pp.) Charles Frazier, Cold Mountain (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1997): 1-356

WEEK 8Preservationist Pilgrimages

Reading (roughly 180 pp.) John Muir, A Thousand Mile Walk to the Gulf (New York: Houghton Mifflin Company,

1916). (P) excerpts Charles F. Lummis, A Tramp Across the Continent (New York: Scribner’s Sons, 1892). (P)

excerpts

WEEK 9Camping with Charley and Kerouac: Wilderness as Antidote to Mainstream Car

Culture

Reading ( 300+ pp.) John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley: In Search of America (New York: Bantam Books,

1962). 1-275. Jack Kerouac, On the Road (New York: Penguin Books, 1957). (P) excerpts Jack Kerouac, Dharma Bums (New York: Viking Press, 1958). (P) excerpts

WEEK 10Variations on Trans-continental Travel

Reading (298 pp.) William Least Heat-Moon, River-Horse: The Logbook of a boat across America (New York:

Houghton Mifflin Company, 1999): 1-186, 331-342, 429-502. (270) Edward Abbey, “Down the River with Henry Thoreau,” in Stephen Trimble, ed., Words

From the Land: Encounters with Natural History Writing (Reno, Nevada: University of Nevada Press, 1995): 48-76. (P) (28)

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WEEK 11Bioregionalism and Belonging

Reading (188 pp.) Wes Jackson, “Becoming Native to our Places,” in Becoming Native to this Place

(Washington D. C.: Counterpoint, 1996), 87-103. (P) (16) Scott Russell Sanders, Staying Put: Making a Home in a Restless World (Boston,

Massachusetts: Beacon Press, 1993): 1-121, 173-194. (142) Henry David Thoreau, Walden (P)

excerpts

WEEK 12The Journey’s End

Reading Jon Krakauer, Into the Wild (New York: Villard Books, 1996): 1-203.

WEEK 13Topic of Choice

We will decide collectively by week 10 and I will have a supplementary reading packet available

Final papers due in class

Course requirements, grading, and assignments4. Participation and attendance (35% of the grade)

Attendance will count for 10%, participation 15%, and 10, one page response papers 10%. Please note that participation is more than just opening your mouth for the sake of saying something. It is being prepared to engagingly discuss the assigned readings. The success of the seminar requires that each participant articulate and be able to defend her / his ideas, as well as listen carefully and respectfully to the questions, concerns, and ideas of others.

Leading Discussion / class handout Each week, one or two people (depending on class size) will be responsible for starting off our classroom discussion. If you are paired with someone, the two of you will be expected to collaborate. You are responsible for isolating key words, concepts, or images from the week’s reading. You might address overarching questions or present materials / perspectives missing from the class. Each person should speak for ONLY 5-7 minutes before opening the conversation up to the seminar or moving on to a specific activity. If leading discussion singly, your handout should be limited to one page. If presenting as a pair, your handout should be a maximum of two pages. Plan to meet with me during

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office hours at least one week in advance before you are scheduled to lead discussion. Leading discussion is considered part of participation. Creativity is always encouraged. To be clear, class participation will be evaluated according to the following criteria:




2. Ten (1 page) response papers (factored into participation grade)Due the Tuesday before class by 5 PM, five of these pieces are intended to initiate a response to the materials, and as such may be impressionistic or journalistic in style and tone. Engaging the readings for the week, they may be reflective, exploratory, or personal. Examples include thoughtful considerations of movement, travel, or daily technologies and their effect on perceptions of and interactions with the natural world. Five of these papers are due before week 6.The remaining five response papers, due any time up until and including week 12, should directly address the central issues of the week’s readings and must make an analytical argument about the texts. You might address the author’s methods, question a work’s organization, unearth hidden assumptions, or challenge the author’s conclusions. When you hand these in, you should tag them “Analytical response # ___” in the header. In other words, you may skip two out of the 12 weeks for which writings are assigned. Though the response papers will not be graded, I will return them to you with written comments and factor them into the participation grade.

3. Mid – term essay (25% of the grade) In contrast to the final research paper, which will involve extensive outside research, for this essay you will be expected to develop a topic with me in advance (at least three weeks before the paper’s due date), based in part on one or more of the readings from the first half of the course. This is not a research paper, and you should not devote the time to it that a formal research project might demand. Rather, it should be a somewhat speculative venture forth into your own exploration of intellectual travel, grounded both in your experiences and the materials from the course.

4. Final research paper (30% of the grade)This project is your chance to synthesize the material covered in this course through your own engagement with the assigned readings and your own research. Papers should

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incorporate one or more of the broader themes of the semester and integrate your chosen topic with one or more of the assigned texts. In addition to using relevant secondary sources, you are expected to incorporate primary historical data – diaries, newspapers, maps, photographs, images, government reports – into the structure of your argument. You will try understand how documents and data fit into a broader social, political, cultural, and ecological context. We will schedule one-on-one and group meetings throughout the semester well in advance of the due date.

2 John Lemmons, Eleanor Saboski, Pamela Morgan, Jacque Carter, Owen Grumbling, and Jaime Hylton suggest a number of possibilities in “An Integrated Learning Community To Increase Environmental Awareness,” Environmental History Review16 (Spring 1992) 1: 64-76.3 Werner Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy: The Revolution in Modern Science (New York, 1958), 109 quoted in H. Stuart Hughes, History as Art and as Science: Twin Vistas on the Past (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1964), 2.4 Joan W. Scott discusses the paradox of doing history at great length in, “After History?” in Joan W. Scott and Debra Keates, eds. Schools of Thought: Twenty-five Years of Interpretive Social Science (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001).5 William Cronon, “The Uses of Environmental History” Environmental History Review (Fall 1993): 17.6 John Lemmons, Eleanor Saboski, Pamela Morgan, Jacque Carter, Owen Grumbling, Jaime Hylton, “An Integrated Learning Community To Increase Environmental Awareness,” Environmental History Review16 (Spring 1992) 1: 66-67.8 9 Here I paraphrase David Harvey in, “Militant Particularism and Global Ambition: The Conceptual Politics of Place, Space, and Environment in the Work of Raymond Williams,” Social Text 42 (Spring 1995) : 69-98.

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portfolio goalsfaculty.umb.edu/pjt/759-03bm.doc · web viewaldo leopold, “february: good oak,”...

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