HIST 302:  Topics in Environmental History – NATURE                     Fall 2005

Prof. Nancy Shoemaker                                                                        nancy.shoemaker@uconn.edu

Office: 227 Wood                                                                                    ext. 6-5926

Mailbox: 118 Wood                                                                                    Off Hrs: T 1-3, W 9-11:30

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Course Description

 

The main objective of this course is to explore how human relationships to nature have varied across space and time.  What is nature?  Where have people variously drawn the line between nature and culture?  What have been the most common debates about how humans should interact with nature?  How have ideas about nature shaped the environment, and how have environments influenced ideas about nature?  Particular issues that we will cover in seminar discussions are (1) leading environmental philosophies and policies, especially in U.S. history, (2) “the commons” (common property), or in other words, how people divide up natural resources for human use, (3) people’s relationships with animals, (4) the commodification of nature in popular culture, such as with tourism, and (5) the meaning of landscapes in the human imagination.

 

Seminar readings will deal mainly, but not entirely, with nineteenth- and twentieth-century American history topics.  The course requirements will consist of a few short assignments and a substantial research project in primary sources that should result in a 10-12 page paper equivalent to what historians would present at an academic conference.  The conference paper and the other short assignments may be on any geography or time period that the student chooses:  they do NOT have to be on American history topics.  However, the issues central to the course—aspects of nature such as those described above—must be addressed in all written work.

 

More particularly, I aim to achieve these two objectives.  (1) I see this course as an opportunity for us to brainstorm–to think creatively and expansively--about the many research possibilities open to scholars in environmental history.  (2) I have also deliberately included among our readings texts that are discussed and referred to frequently in the field of American environmental history.  This attention to the historiographic “canon” of American environmental history should provide a solid footing for anyone who later goes on to teach environmental history.

 

Collective Readings

BOOKS AVAILABLE FOR PURCHASE AT UCONN CO-OP:

Davis, Susan G. Spectacular Nature: Corporate Culture and the Sea World Experience.  Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997.

Nash, Roderick Frazier. The Rights of Nature:  A History of Environmental Ethics. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989.

Ritvo, Harriet. The Animal Estate: The English and Other Creatures in the Victorian Age. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987.

Thomas, Keith. Man and the Natural World: Changing Attitudes in England, 1500-1800. NY: Oxford University Press, 1983 (reprinted 1996—either version is okay).

Warren, Louis S.  The Hunter’s Game: Poachers and Conservationists in Twentieth-Century America.  New Haven: Yale University, 1997.

Worster, Donald.  Nature’s Economy: A History of Ecological Ideas. 2nd ed. NY: Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge, 1994. (1st ed., San Francisco: Sierra Club, 1977, is also acceptable if that’s the edition you find).

 

ARTICLES AND DOCUMENTS IN GRAD LOUNGE:

DOCUMENTS

Carson, Rachel. Silent Spring. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1962: 5-13, 245-261.

Hardin, Garrett. “The Tragedy of the Commons.” Science 162 (13 Dec. 1968): 1243-1248.

Leopold, Aldo. “Thinking Like a Mountain,” “Conservation Esthetic,” and “The Land Ethic,” in             The Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There. NY: Oxford University Press,   1987. (Orig. published 1949). Pp. 129-133, 165-177, 201-226.

Marsh, George Perkins.  Excerpts from Man and Nature.  Ed. David Lowenthal. Cambridge,

MA: Harvard University Press, 1965. (Orig. published 1864).  Pp. 3-5, 102-108, 186-189, 279-280.

Walt Disney Productions, Bambi (1942)—vhs in grad lounge, a copy ordered for Culpeper Media Center in Babbidge, and otherwise widely rentable in either vhs or dvd format.

 

ARTICLES AND BOOK CHAPTERS

Basso, Keith H. “Stalking with Stories.”  In Basso, Wisdom Sits in Places: Landscape and     

Language Among the Western Apache. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996: 37-70.

Cronon, William. “A Place for Stories:  Nature, History, and Narrative.” Journal of American             History 78 (March 1992): 1347-1376.

Cronon, William. “The Trouble with Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature.” In             William Cronon, ed., Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature. NY:             W.W. Norton, 1996:69-90.

DeLuca, Kevin and Anne Demo. “Imagining Nature and Erasing Class and Race:  Carleton

Watkins, John Muir, and the Construction of Wilderness.” Environmental History 6, #3 (July 2001): 541-560.    

Hyde, Anne Farrar. “The Far Away Nearby: Discovering the Far Western Landscape, 1885-

1915.” An American Vision: Far Western Landscape and National Culture, 1820            -1920.

NY: NYU Press, 1990: 191-243 plus endnotes.

Marx, Leo.  Excerpts from The Machine in the Garden:  Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in             America.  NY: Oxford University Press, 1964: 3-33.

Sörlin, Sverker and Paul Warde. “The Problem of the Problem of Environmental History—a Re-            reading of the Field and Its Purpose.”  Centre for History and Economics, King’s College,             University of Cambridge. Accessed 6/17/05.

www-histecon.kings.cam.ac.uk/envdoc/uses_env/documents/uses_Env_History.pdf

Steinberg, Philip E. “Ocean-Space in Non-Modern Societies.” In The Social Construction of the   Ocean. NY: Cambridge University Press, 2001: 39-67.

Stilgoe, John R. “Glim,” In Alongshore.  New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994: 19-44.

Sutter, Paul. “Reflections: What Can U.S. Environmental Historians Learn from Non-U.S.             Environmental Historiography?”  Environmental History 8 (Jan. 2003): 109-129.             www.historycooperative.org.

White, Richard. “’Are You an Environmentalist or Do You Work for a Living?’: Work and             Nature.” In William Cronon, ed., Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in             Nature. NY: W.W. Norton, 1996: 171-185.

White, Richard. “Historiographical Essay American Environmental History: The Development of             a New Historical Field.  Pacific Historical Review 54, #3 (August 1985): 297-335.

White, Richard. “Afterword  Environmental History:  Watching a Historical Field Mature.”              Pacific Historical Review 70, #1 (Feb. 2001): 103-111.

 

ADDITIONAL, INDIVIDUAL READINGS:  To Be Assigned (for the options see “deep topic texts” in the class schedule and the list of books by Cronon and White on 11/30)

 

Assignments and Grading

Historiography Report                        15%

Deep Topic Report                        15%

Class Participation                           30%

Research Project                        40%

 

HISTORIOGRAPHY REPORT 

Your topic for this report is entirely of your own choosing, though you might for strategic purposes try to work on a topic closely related to the topic of your conference/research paper, so you have a historiographic head-start for the research project.

This assignment has two components: 

1.  A brief (ten-minute) oral presentation that includes a handout to be distributed to each seminar participant listing the main ideas and secondary texts on a topic in environmental history; and

2. A four-page (word-processed, double-spaced) paper with an one-page bibliography that provides an overview of the main research questions, methodologies, and primary source materials historians have used to pursue this topic.  Note that the oral report is due the third week of class, while the written version is due within two weeks of the oral presentation.

 

DEEP-TOPIC REPORT 

This also has oral and written components.  Each student in the class will read one extra book and report on it to the rest of the class.  These “deep topic texts” are listed in the class schedule; in our first class session, the deep topic texts will be assigned, preferably one text to one student. Throughout the semester, on the day when a deep topic text is listed, students assigned to that text will give a brief (ten minute) oral report (1) summarizing the book’s argument, methodology, and types of primary sources used and (2) comparing that book to the main reading for that week. A four-page paper is due within the next two weeks.  (Note that these papers will be turned in on an individualized schedule that depends on which deep-topic text you have been assigned).  

 

 

RESEARCH PROJECT: CONFERENCE PAPER

The end-result should be a “conference paper” of 10-12 pages plus foot/endnotes–the paper when read out loud should take 20 minutes.  As is standard with historical scholarship, this paper should be based on original research in primary sources, and the paper should address clearly the significance of your original research by references to the work of other historians, cited in the footnotes if not also in the text itself.  The topic must be on ideas about nature, but otherwise there are no constraints in terms of place, time period, or methodology.  Before the final paper is due, several small topic-forming and research-progress reports are due.  At our last seminar meeting, we will replicate a conference experience by having each student make a conference-style presentation of his/her paper.  The grade for the research project is based largely on the quality of the final paper (originality, depth of research, analytical insight, and writing clarity).

 

NOTE ON FORMAT OF WRITTEN WORK:  All written work must be submitted in hardcopy.  If I say that you may email me your paper, then go ahead, but otherwise please do not submit assignments by email.  And number your pages!

 

Class Schedule

 

WK 1 - 8/31:  INTRODUCTION

1) Pre-Seminar Assignment, if possible:  look through the 2003-2005 issues of Environmental History (www.historycooperative.org).  Find ONE thing that interests you–an article, book review, whatever–and print out a crucial page or two to give to me before our seminar meets. I’ll xerox copies for each seminar participant, and we’ll use these to start our conversation about what environmental history is, what it might be, and what your own interests in environmental history are.  This exercise will also acquaint you with the leading journal in the field.

 

2) Task in seminar: assign deep-topic texts. Please come to seminar with a list of your preferences.  The ideal is to have one text per student, but if several students pick the same text, we can probably find a way to accommodate everyone’s preferences.

 

WK 2 - 9/7:   SOME IDEAS ABOUT NATURE

Read:               Thomas, Man and the Natural World

 

WK 3 - 9/14:  SOME OF YOUR IDEAS ABOUT NATURE

Due:                 Historiography Report (oral report w/handout). 

Read:               sample historiographic essays:

                        White, “Historiographical Essay American Environmental History” and

                                     “Afterword Environmental History”

                        Cronon, “A Place for Stories”

                        Sutter, “Reflections”

                        Sörlin and Warde, “The Problem of the Problem”

Task:                Formation of Question for Research Project

 

WK 4 - 9/21:  ENVIRONMENTAL PHILOSOPHIES AND POLICIES, I

Read:              Worster, Nature’s Economy, pp. 1-204

              Document - Marsh, Man and Nature excerpts

 

Deep-Topic Texts:

Grove, Richard. Green Imperialism: Colonial Expansion, Tropical Island Edens and the Origins of Environmentalism, 1600-1860. NY: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

Judd, Richard W. Common Lands, Common People: The Origins of Conservation in Northern New England. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997.

 

WK 5 - 9/28:  ENVIRONMENTAL PHILOSOPHIES AND POLICIES, II

Due:                 Historiography Report (written version)

Read:               Worster, Nature’s Economy, pp. 205-end

Document - Leopold, three essays from Sand County Almanac

 

Deep-Topic Texts:

Worster, Donald. Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s. NY: Oxford University Press, 1979.

Langston, Nancy.  Forest Dreams, Forest Nightmares:  The Paradox of Old Growth in the Inland West. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1995.

Reiger, John F. American Sportsmen and the Origins of Conservation. NY: Winchester Press,   1972.

Pyne, Stephen. Fire in America: A Cultural History of Wildland and Rural Fire. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982.

Lekan, Thomas M. Imagining the Nation in Nature: Landscape Preservation and German Identity, 1885-1945. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004.

 

WK 6 - 10/5:   RIGHTS OF NATURE?

Read:               Nash, Rights of Nature

Document - Carson, Silent Spring excerpts

 

Deep-Topic Texts:

Gottlieb, Robert.  Forcing the Spring: The Transformation of the American Environmental

 Movement.  Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 1993.

 

WK 7 - 10/12: THE COMMONS

Read:               Warren, Hunter’s Game

Document - Hardin, “Tragedy of the Commons”

 

Deep-Topic Texts:           

Spence, Mark David. Dispossessing the Wilderness:  Indian Removal and the Making of the National Parks.  NY: Oxford University Press, 1999.

 

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

Montoya, María E. Translating Property: The Maxwell Land Grant and the Conflict over Land

in the American West, 1840-1900. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002.

Steinberg, Theodore. Nature Incorporated: Industrialization and the Waters of New England.             NY: Cambridge University Press, 1991.

Merrill, Karen R. Public Lands and Political Meaning: Ranchers, the Government, and the             Property Between Them. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002.

 

WK 8 - 10/19:  ANIMALS

Read:               Ritvo, Animal Estate

Document - Bambi           

 

Deep-Topic Texts:           

Anderson, Virginia DeJohn. Creatures of Empire: How Domestic Animals Transformed Early America. NY: Oxford University Press, 2004.

Russell, Edmund. War and Nature:  Fighting Humans and Insects with Chemicals from World War I to Silent Spring. NY: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

MacKenzie, John M. The Empire of Nature: Hunting, Conservation and British Imperialism. Manchester, U.K.: Manchester University Press, 1988.

Turner, James. Reckoning with the Beast: Animals, Pain, and Humanity in the Victorian Mind. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980.

 

WK 9 - 10/26:  MEANING OF LANDSCAPES

Due:                 Research Paper Plan (a one-page summary of research question, likely primary document resources, brief bibliography of secondary literature:  Bring ONE copy for EACH seminar participant)

Read:               NATIONALISM, NATIONAL IDENTITY

                        Marx, Excerpts from The Machine in the Garden           

                        Hyde, “The Far Away Nearby” in An American Vision

                        WHOSE CULTURAL LANDSCAPE?

                        Basso, “Stalking with Stories”

                        DeLuca and Demo, “Imagining Nature and Erasing Class and Race”

                        OCEANS:

                        Stilgoe, “Glim”

                        Steinberg, “Ocean-Space in Non-Modern Societies”

 

WK 10 - 11/2:  NO CLASS - INDIVIDUAL MEETINGS TBA

 

WK 11 - 11/9:    NATURE AS ENTERTAINMENT

Due:                 Rough Draft of Conference Paper – very ROUGH drafts are acceptable but the further along you are, the better the feedback you’ll receive

Read:               Davis, Spectacular Nature

 

WK 12 - 11/16:  NO CLASS - INDIVIDUAL MEETINGS TBA

 

THANKSGIVING BREAK

 

WK 13 - 11/30:  CATCHING UP ON THE CLASSICS – CRONON & WHITE

Due:            Problem Statement for Discussion (paragraph or so as a handout for each seminar participant: what’s your number-one problem as you work on the research paper)

Read:            Common Readings:

Cronon, “The Trouble with Wilderness”

White, “Are You an Environmentalist or Do You Work for a Living?”

 

Also read one book of your choosing (pick a book you have not previously read):

Cronon, William. Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New                             England. NY: Hill and Wang, 1983.

Cronon, William. Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West. NY: W.W. Norton,                         1991.

White, Richard.  The Organic Machine.  NY: Hill and Wang, 1995.

            White, Richard.  The Roots of Dependency: Subsistence, Environment, and Social

                        Change among the Choctaws, Pawnees, and Navajos.  Lincoln:  University of

                        Nebraska Press, 1983.

 

WK 14 - 12/7:  PANEL PRESENTATIONS

 

DUE DURING FINAL-EXAM WEEK: Final Research/Conference Paper