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Emails Sent to Class List ServerMessage Sent on November 30 about End-of-Semester DetailsFriends-- I've just finished posting the final note sheets for 460 in case you've been waiting for them to arrive; they can all be accessed from our course web page at http://www.williamcronon.net/courses/460.htm. Although we're reading the remainder of David Nye's Consuming Power this week, we'll be devoting section meetings to presentations and discussions of your place papers. Please come to section prepared to speak for about 2-3 minutes about what most surprised and interested you about your place as a result of exploring its environmental history. Next week's sections will be devoted to looking back over the full semester, reflecting on major themes of the course, and preparing for the final exam. Please try to look over your notes plan beforehand so you can come with any and all questions you may have about the course or the final. Our review session for the course will be from 7-8:30pm on Sunday, December 14, in 3650 Humanities.. Our final exam will be on Tuesday, December 16, from 2:45-4:45pm in 3650 Humanities (please note the room, which is not in the original syllabus). I hope you had a good Thanksgiving. See you Monday! Bill
Message Sent on November 18 about Buildings of the University of Wisconsin WebsiteFor any of you who are doing place papers about sites on the UW-Madison campus who haven’t yet discovered the website below, it’s chockablock full of important historical information and lots of photographs. Many of you may enjoy perusing it even if your place paper is about an entirely different place. Bill http://archives.library.wisc.edu/exhibits/buildings/buildings.html Buildings of the University of WisconsinThe Buildings of the University of Wisconsin was published by former UW student Jim Feldman in 1997. It was the first comprehensive account of all of the physical structures that make up the UW-Madison campus—from heating plants and parking structures to the more stately facades of Bascom and Science Halls. Every campus building is included, whether designed and built or purchased by the university, those that are still in use and those that have faded from memory. Over the past decade, Feldman's work has benefited innumerable students and researchers exploring the story of this unique campus. It sold out long ago and has since only been available via the few copies in libraries. This digital collection revisits Feldman's work and adds to it, while making it accessible to anyone interested in exploring the the history of the campus. The original text is presented here in PDF format, along with hundreds of supplemental images of the buildings. Please note that the text itself has not been edited or updated, and therefore includes only the buildings that were in existence in 1997.
Message Sent on November 15, 2008, about Citation Forms for Final Place PapersFriends— We’ve been getting a number of queries from students about how to produce citations and/or bibliographic entries for your place paper. Your most important goal should be to adopt a standard citation format and apply it consistently to the sources you cite in your paper, and if you need a reliable model for doing this, the most widely used standard in history and many other fields in the humanities and social sciences is the Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition, 2003. You may already know the abridged version of this book edited by Kate L. Turabian, et al., A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations, Seventh Edition: Chicago Style for Students and Researchers, 2007 edition. (The editions of these books are *very* important, since the styles they recommend have changed quite dramatically over time. If you’re a graduate student who will be publishing journal articles and books, you may want to purchase the actual Chicago Manual of Style, but since it’s fairly expensive, Turabian’s Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations should serve for most purpose (it’s a little over $11 from Amazon.com). But if you don’t want to purchase one of these books as a reference to use during college, you can gain access to the same material on-line. The UW Writing Center has an abridged introduction to the citation forms of the Chicago Manual at http://www.wisc.edu/writing/Handbook/DocChicago.html, so you might start there. (Be sure to pay attention to the fact that footnotes and endnotes have slightly different forms than bibliographies do.) If you want access to the entire content of the Chicago Manual of Style, it is accessible through the UW Library System’s MadCat catalog; the chapter containing most of what you need is Chapter 17, “Documentation II: Specific Content.” If you are logging on to the electronic version of the Manual from an on-campus computer, you can probably just click on this link to get to Chapter 17 of the Manual: The general rule to keep in mind through all the complicated formats contained in these manuals is that you should provide everything your reader would need to get back to the source you’re using. If it’s a book, the reader will need author, title, place of publication, publisher, year of publication, and page references. If it’s an article, the reader will need the author, article title, journal name, volume and number, date of publication, and page. If it’s a document or a photograph from manuscript, the reader will need the name of the person that created the document, the document’s title or description, the date it was created, the collection containing it, the archive in which you found it. And so on. Ask yourself what you would need to know to find the document again, and you’ll have a pretty good idea of what you’ll need to put into your citation or bibliography entry. I hope this is helpful. Good luck! Bill
Message Sent on November 1, 2008, about "How to Read a Landscape" Web PageFriends— This fall, my graduate seminar in environmental history has been working together to build a big new website on “how to do research in environmental history” that I hope will eventually be useful to students in 460 working on their place papers. The big website won’t be completed before the end of this semester, alas, but we *have* just posted a large beta draft web page on “How to Read a Landscape” that might conceivably be useful to you as you work over the next three weeks on your place papers. It’s very long, so we’ll probably break it up into several pages before we’re done, but right now while it’s still under construction it seemed more convenient to leave everything on a single page. You can find the page at Enjoy! Bill
Message Sent on October 31, 2008, about Pare Lorentz's The Plow That Broke the PlainsFriends— If you’re interested in spending an extra half hour this week thinking about the Dust Bowl beyond what you’re reading in Donald Worster’s book, you might enjoy viewing The Plow That Broke the Plains (1936), the classic documentary by Pare Lorentz. It’s among the most important films made during the New Deal, and still makes fascinating viewing—and listening too. The score was written by the great American composer Virgil Thomson, and although the soundtrack is pretty rough-hewn by modern technical standards, it’s still a striking piece of music. Funded by the federal government, the film in the public domain and can easily be downloaded from the amazing www.archive.org website, which collects public domain films for free download—and also, astonishingly, has been trying to archive the entire World Wide Web since the late 1990s, so that you can use the site to search the Web at earlier moments in its history. If you’re interested in viewing Plow That Broke the Plains, you can access it here: For more on Lorentz and his work, see By the way, Lorentz also made a documentary in 1937 about flood control on the Mississippi River which in some ways foreshadows some of the issues we’ll examine at the end of the course relating to Hurricane Katrina, so if you enjoy viewing Plow, you might also want to watch The River: None of this is required, of course—take a look at these only if you’re interested. Have a great weekend. Bill
Message Sent on October 20, 2008, re Section Field Trips and Stradling's Conservation in the Progressive EraFriends— I’m writing mainly to let you know that we’ve planned a special treat for 460 discussion sections this week so we can all relax a bit in the wake of the midterm exam. Weather permitting, each discussion section will be taking a “reading the landscape” walking tour of the main UW-Madison campus. Temperatures over the next three days will be cool (30s at night and low 50s as the highs during the day), so please come to discussion section dressed in warm clothing (you might even want to have a hat and gloves just in case you get chilly, since the best way to get warm is to put on a hat). Wear good walking shoes as well. Tomorrow (Tuesday) should be a sunny day, but there’s a slight chance (20%) of showers on Wednesday and a somewhat higher chance (30%) of rain on Thursday, with breezier conditions as well. If your section is on Wednesday or Thursday, you should plan to bring along a rain jacket and an umbrella, *AND* if it’s looking like rain, you should check your email just before section just to make sure that your TA hasn’t decided to cancel class because of conditions. Sections will start at their usual locations in the Humanities Building, and head out from there. If by chance you arrive late, it’s likely that your section will have headed out across Library Mall toward Memorial Union, so you may be able to catch up with them there. Finally, our reading for *next* week—David Stradling’s Conservation in the Progressive Era: Classic Texts—is one of the most important (and most interesting) we’ll read all semester. The book is quite short and readable, and aside from the introduction and notes, it consists entirely of primary documents relating to different aspects of the Progressive conservation movement in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As such, it’s the best chance we’ll have to practice the craft of “doing history” by trying to understand a very important past political and cultural movement by constructing interpretations and arguments directly from the primary sources. Please come to section next week prepared to share your thoughts about
Stradling’s notes suggest other interesting questions as well, and you’ll get more out of the book if you study his introductions as carefully as you do the individual readings. The discussion will go especially well if you come to class having identified quotations and passages from the Stradling reader to support points you make during class. Enjoy your field trips this week, and I’ll see you Wednesday. Bill
Message Sent on October 3, 2008, re Review Session Schedule and Historical Society ToursFriends— Please make the following additions to the syllabus for History / Geography / Environmental Studies 460. 1) In response to various student comments and suggestions, we’ve decided that the review session for the midterm exam should remain on its originally scheduled date of Wednesday, October 15, but we are moving it half an hour earlier so that interested students can watch the presidential debates scheduled for 8:00pm that evening. The review session will run from 6:30pm to approximately 7:50pm that evening, and we will meet in 1100 Grainger Hall. Please be sure to note this location, which has just been assigned to us and is NOT in the printed version of the syllabus. 2) Please try if you possibly can to attend one of the library tours of the Wisconsin Historical Society that have been specially arranged to help students in 460 research their place papers. The Society is the largest freestanding collection of North American history in the world, and contains nearly endless treasures that can help you with this assignment—to say nothing of future historical projects you might be interested in doing during your time at UW-Madison. The three tours that Society staff members have generously arranged for us will occur at the following times: Thanks, have a great weekend...and I’ll see you next week. Bill
Message Sent on September 30, 2008, re Review Session Schedule and Romanticism ReadingsFriends— As you’ve probably noticed, our midterm exam in 460 is scheduled for Monday, October 20. For all sorts of complicated reasons, I was forced to schedule our evening review session for the exam at 7:00pm on Wednesday, October 15, even though all my experience has taught me that that’s too early to be of optimal use to you. The ideal review session, I believe, takes place two days before the exam, late enough that most students have had time to do significant studying, but still early enough for them to take advantage of suggestions and insights they gain from the review session. Holding the review five days early will probably mean that many of you may not have done much serious reviewing before the review session, and that can have the paradoxical effect that it actually increases anxiety about the exam, when one of the main purposes of the review session is to diminish such anxiety. Since finalizing the syllabus, I’ve learned that we have an additional problem on Wednesday, October 15, which is that the next presidential debate (which I assume many of you would like to watch) will take place at 8:00pm that evening. I’d therefore like to take a vote tomorrow about three alternative options for the review session, as follows: 1) Leave the review session where it is, 7:00pm on Wednesday, October 15. 2) Move the review session 30 minutes earlier, to 6:30pm on Wednesday, October 15. 3) Move the review session to 3:00pm on Saturday, October 18, which would place it in what I believe to be the much more optimal position of occurring two days before the exam. Please think about these three choices and come to class tomorrow prepared to vote your preference for one of them. Finally, please remember that the “Romanticism Readings” for next week’s discussion should be downloaded from our course web page at http://www.williamcronon.net/courses/460.htm. I would urge you to print out the PDF so you can take notes on it (the readings are fairly dense) and bring it with you to discussion section. Thanks, and I’ll see you tomorrow. Bill
Message Sent on September 18, 2008, re Website Updates and Final Place PapersFriends— I’m writing mainly to let you know that I’ve added quite a few note sheets to the website for History / Geography / Environmental Studies 460 at http://www.williamcronon.net/courses/460.htm. All note sheets up to the midterm exam are now available for review. Also, after photocopying an old handout of agricultural time series from 1800-1980 that I’ll distribute for next Wednesday’s lecture, September 24, on “The Machine in the Garden,” I belatedly decided to update the graphs using more modern technology (the original was done using a pen plotter in the days when that was the best available way to print graphics). The file I used for plotting the document was no longer accessible to me, so I rebuilt the spreadsheet from scratch, carried it up to the year 2000, and turned it into PDFs that can be printed in either black and white or color. The handout I’ll circulate in class next Wednesday is still the original black-and-white plot, so you may want to download and print one of the newer, sharper PDFs. If you have access to a color inkjet printer, that’s undoubtedly the most attractive way to view the graphs. You’ll also find that the readings for Week 8, “Rethinking Nature,” are now accessible from the course web page in the “Other Resources” section using the PDF link next to “Romanticism Readings.” The direct link is Finally, remember that the week after next (when we’re discussing David Nye’s Consuming Power), we’ll be asking students to describe to other members of their discussion sections the place about which they’ll be writing their final papers, along with the key environmental changes or themes on which their paper will focus. If you have any questions about making this choice, this coming week’s discussion section would be a good time to raise and resolve those questions. Have a great weekend, and I’ll see you on Monday. Bill
Message Sent on September 14, 2008, re Miscellaneous Computer ProblemsFriends— A few of you have had trouble in the past week accessing web content for 460. Here are a few tips based on questions I’ve received thus far: E-Reserve Readings
Problems Reading PDF Files Cronon Website Unavailable I hope this is helpful. Let me know if you’ve had any other problems that I haven’t addressed here. See you tomorrow! Bill
Message Sent on September 5, 2008, re Second Week of Classes:Here are a few reminders and updates for the next week History/Geography/Environmental Studies 460 based on queries we’ve been getting from students. 1) If you or any students you know are still monitoring the Registrar’s website in the hope of getting into the course or finding a different section, please be aware that there will always appear to be open seats in the lecture even though there are no available seats opens in discussion sections. This is because the course has many auditors sitting in on lectures, and if we capped lecture seats, students would be unable to register for sections because the lecture cap would block them from doing so. Again: to take the course for credit, you must find an open section. Just ignore the lecture count. 2) A number of students have been asking whether they can write their final place papers for this course about a location outside of the United States. The quick answer to this question is no. This a course in U.S. history, and because the events and processes and themes we’ll be examining in detail are all focused on the United States, you’ll place yourself at a very significant disadvantage by writing about a non-U.S. location and trying to connect it to what you learn in this course. You’d likely also face more problems finding sources for your place. The few times we’ve made an exception to this rule in the past, the results have rarely been good. Although it might be possible to write about a Canadian place if you’re knowledgeable about essential similarities and differences between Canadian and U.S. history, it would be worth checking in with your section leader before choosing even a Canadian location. For most students in the course, you’ll be much better off researching and writing about a location in the U.S. And remember...wonderful place papers have been written about locations right here in Madison. Check the sample place papers on the course website if you want great examples of different kinds of places that have worked well in the past: http://www.williamcronon.net/courses/460_place_papers.htm. They’re a lot of fun to read, and I would urge you to peruse them sooner rather than later. 3) Remember that next week’s sections will be devoted to a discussion of the “found objects” you’ll be bringing to class with you. Again, a “found object” can be almost anything that relates to past landscapes or environmental interactions in a place you know well: a snapshot, an advertisement, a physical object, a tourist brochure, a map, an aerial photograph, a family letter, a diary, or anything else that seems to you especially evocative of how that place has changed over time. It’d be great if you could bring in a found object about the place you’re considering for your final paper, but if you’re not ready to do that, just bring in any document or object that seems to you evocative of an important environmental change in the past or some environmental historical theme that matters to you. If you’d like suggestions for the range of possible things you might consider bringing in, watch the slide show on the home page of my website at www.williamcronon.net: virtually every image you’ll see there is a kind of “found object” of something that matters to me about places and people and processes I care about (though many would obviously have to be brought in as photographs, since I have among the passions of mine you’ll see on display in these pictures are landscapes). 4) If you’d like to reread Wednesday’s lecture, remember that you can download the full text of it from 5) Aside from the Kennecott lecture, there are no required readings for next week’s section. You’ll find the readings for the following week on the library e-reserve list accessible through your My UW web page. 6) Finally, I’ve loaded new handouts for upcoming lectures on the course website, along with a some other information, so you may want to take another look at http://www.williamcronon.net/courses/460.htm. Have a great weekend, and I’ll see you on Monday! Bill
Message Sent on September 1, 2008, re First Week of ClassesFriends— Welcome back to campus! This is a quick reminder about our first lecture (2:30-3:45pm Wednesday, September 3, in 2650 Humanities) and the start of discussion sections for History/Geography/Environmental Studies 460. Please remember the following: 1) Our discussion sections for 460 WILL meet this week, even if they occur before the first lecture on Wednesday afternoon, so please be sure to attend the section for which you are registered. 2) You can only attend the section for which you are registered; if it does not fit your schedule and you cannot make it fit your schedule, you MUST drop that section and hope that another one opens up. You cannot register for one section and attend another. (Also, if you happen to be registered for the Honors / Grad section #301 on Tuesday morning at 8:30am are not a grad student or Honors student, you cannot remain in that section and should drop it.) 3) If you’ve not read carefully the emails that were sent out in August about various aspects of the course, you should do those before your first discussion section. You’ll find them on our course website at 4) Finally, we want to remind you that laptops and other screen-based devices are not permitted during lectures or discussion sections; you can read about the reasons why at See you on Wednesday, if not before! Bill Cronon
Message Sent on August 20, 2008 re Required TextbooksFriends— If you’ve reviewed the syllabus for History/Geography/Environmental Studies 460 via our course web page at http://www.williamcronon.net/courses/460.htm, you’ll know that the required books for the course are William Cronon, Changes in the Land, Hill & Wang Even you were to purchase all of these new, they should cost less than $80, especially since I eliminated a couple volumes I’ve used in the past that were more expensive than the ones listed above. A couple students have written to ask whether it’s OK to read the older 1983 edition of my own Changes in the Land. The answer is an emphatic yes. I am definitely NOT trying to make money off the sales of my own book in this course, so you’re more than welcome to buy a used copy of the 1983 edition if you’d like. I just haven’t been able to find a better brief volume for introducing important themes about colonial environmental change and the general intellectual approach of environmental history as a whole. Aside from trivial differences in pagination, the only substantive change between the 1983 and the 2003 editions is the addition of a new afterword in the latter which explains how growing up in Madison during the 1960s and 1970s taught me how to write a book about environmental change in colonial New England. Most of you will probably enjoy reading it as a narrative of how historians come to write the books they do, especially given its relevance to Madison and the UW. But so you will NOT have to buy 2003 edition of the book to read the new afterword, I’ve posted it on the e-reserve list for the course, which you can access via the Academic tab on your My UW page. If you buy the 1983 edition, please just read the new afterword on e-reserve. Bill
Message Sent on August 15, 2008 re Section Meetings, Found Objects, Changing Sections, and LaptopsPlease forgive me for sending out another general email to the course list for History/Geography/Environmental Studies 460, but there have been some important changes in the course that I need to share with you, especially concerning section meetings during the first week of classes. 1) The TA’s and I have been talking, and we have decided that we WILL hold section meetings during the first week of classes, even for students whose sections meet before the first lecture on Wednesday, September 3. We’ll do general introductions and talk about the goals of the course in that first section, so that we can devote the second section, during the week of September 8, to talking about the place paper assignment for the course, as described in #2 below. 2) For the second meeting of the semester, we will be asking students to bring to their discussion section a “found object” that relates to the environmental history of the place they’re considering as the subject for their final place paper. A “found object” can be almost anything that relates to past landscapes or environmental interactions in a place you know well: a snapshot, an advertisement, a physical object, a tourist brochure, a map, an aerial photograph, a family letter, a diary, or anything else that seems to you especially evocative of how that place has changed over time. We’ll talk more about both the place paper and this “found object” assignment when we meet with you during the first week of classes, but between now and then, you should at least look over the description of the place paper assignment on the course syllabus, which you can access from the link at the top of the page at http://www.williamcronon.net/courses/460.htm; there are also links to past place papers and other information about this assignment that are accessible via other links lower down this course web page. As I said in my earlier email, the main reason I want to call your attention to this assignment right now, before the start of the semester, is that a number of you will likely choose to write about your home town or a family vacation place, and you may have better access to those places right now than you will when you’re back in Madison. If so, give some thought to whether there are things you can do in your chosen place in the next week or two, and whether there’s some “found object” relating to that place that you could bring back to Madison that would enable you to talk a little at the second discussion section about what you find interesting about the history of your chosen place. And don’t worry, if you’re not yet sure about the place you’d like to choose for your final paper, you’ll still be able to find something at UW-Madison that you can bring to the second discussion section for this “found object” exercise; we’ll help with that during the first section meetings. 3) Sarah Camacho, who had originally intended to serve as a TA in 460, was awarded a wonderful fellowship that does not permit her to serve as a TA, so won’t be leading discussion sections for us this fall. Fortunately, Andrew Erickson, who has also studied American environmental history and is very knowledgeable about the subject, has agreed to take her place, so our team of section leaders now consists of Bill Cronon, Ari Eisenberg, Andrew Erickson, and Adam Mandelman. 4) Remember that if you are currently registered for a section in the course that you cannot actually attend, you must drop that section and hope that a seat becomes available in a section that you *are* able to attend. Being registered in a section you cannot actually attend gives you NO claim on any other sections of the course, so there is no incentive to remain registered in a section you know you cannot attend. Remaining in such a section prevents other students from registering for it, so you will be doing everyone a favor if you drop that section as soon as possible. If you’re still try to find a section that will work for you, you should check the Registrar’s website for 460 as frequently as you can between now and the second week of the semester to see if anything opens up; if it does, you should grab the open slot as quickly as possible. That is the only way you’ll be able to take the course. Section leaders will NOT permit students attend sections in which they are not actually registered. 5) Finally, please be aware of the course’s policy regarding the use of laptop computers or any other screen-based devices during lectures or discussion sections. Because the majority of lectures take place in a darkened room with PowerPoint presentations, because bright laptop screens are distracting to other students in this environment, and because the temptation to multitask has become so enormous now that wireless connections to the Internet are available in most lecture halls, the use of laptop computers or other screen-based devices is not permitted during lectures or discussion sections. Outline note sheets will be available for every lecture, and these should supply many of the notes you’ll need for the course. If you have a medical reason for needing to use a laptop or other screen-based device that has been authorized by the McBurney Center, please let us know. We’re looking forward to seeing you in September. Enjoy what’s left of the summer in the meantime! Bill Cronon
Message Sent August 5, 2008 re Course Website & Syllabus, Place Papers, and Changing SectionsFriends— Welcome to History/Geography/Environmental Studies 460, “American Environmental History,” in which you are currently enrolled! Please read the following carefully so you’ll be ready the first time we meet for lecture, on Wednesday, September 3, at 2:30pm in 2650 Humanities. COURSE WEBSITE AND SYLLABUS: THE PLACE PAPER (be sure to read this now): IF YOU ARE IN A SECTION YOU CANNOT ACTUALLY ATTEND (VERY IMPORTANT): You cannot register in one section but attend a different one. If you’re currently in a section that conflicts with another course in your schedule, you will have to drop one of the two courses unless you’re able to shift to another section that has open seats and that fits your schedule. Neither the teaching assistants nor I will be able to authorize a section change; you can only do this using the standard web process. Being registered in a section you cannot actually attend will not be any help to you in determining whether you’ll eventually get into a section that WILL work. Indeed, hanging on to a section that doesn’t fit your schedule will only delay the inevitable, and make it more difficult for some other student who might have been able to register for that section to do so. (This is actually a pretty good example of an environmental concept called a “tragedy of the commons” that we’ll discuss in the course itself.) I would therefore urge you to drop unworkable sections sooner rather than later so everyone will have a chance to get in to sections that will work for them. I’m sorry for the inconvenience I’m sure this will cause a few of you, but there is really no other way to handle changes under the new automated process. If you need to make a change, I wish you the best of luck—I truly do!—in navigating the automated system. If past experience is any indication, a number of seats should in fact open up in various sections during the first week of classes. That’s all for now. Adam, Ari, Sarah [now Andrew Erickson], and I all look forward to seeing you on September 3. Welcome to the course! Bill Cronon 5103 Humanities Building
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Page revision date: 01-Dec-2008