This page contains an archive of major emails sent to the 469 list server during Fall 2018.
Friends--
I'm writing with a few important details about the final exam for History / Geography / Environmental Studies 469. Please read this email carefully:
I think that's all for now. Best of luck with your reviewing, and I'll look forward to seeing you tomorrow.
Bill
Friends--
I'm writing to let you know that we've decided to modify the final reading assignment for the week of December 3. We recognize that the end of the semester is approaching and that you'll mainly be focusing by next week on preparing for the final exam, so we're no longer requiring you to read the chapter we originally assigned from Robert Caro's The Power Broker.
We'd still like you to read the chapter from Mark Fiege's The Republic of Nature on “The Road to Brown v. Board: An Environmental History of the Color Line,” pp 318-57, which you'll find linked in Canvas.
In addition, we'd like you to watch two very short videos on Brown v. Board:
1) A three-minute interview with Linda Brown Smith on the 30th anniversary of the court ruling:
https://www.chalkbeat.org/posts/us/2018/03/27/in-her-own-words-remembering-linda-brown-who-was-at-the-center-of-americas-school-segregation-battles/
2) A five-minute video excerpt from the Eyes on the Prize documentary series on the contexts and consequences of Brown v. Board:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTGHLdr-iak
Finally, please spend some time perusing the following two maps by locating Madison on them and considering how the two maps relate to each other:
1) Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC) Maps of Racial Redlining During the New Deal:
https://dsl.richmond.edu/panorama/redlining/#loc=4/36.71/-96.93&opacity=0.8
As the "Introduction" to these maps explains, and as you'll see in lecture, these maps were used to determine which neighborhoods were and were not eligible to receive favorable bank loans for would-be homebuyers. Be sure to examine the map legend to understand which neighborhoods were identified as "Best"; "Still Desirable"; "Definitely Declining"; and "Hazardous." (The neighborhoods surrounding Lake Wingra will likely be especially easy for you to locate on both maps.)
2) Racial Dot Map for the 2010 Census:
https://demographics.virginia.edu/DotMap/
This extraordinary map displays a colored dot for every person counted in the Census (aggregated at the level of the census block), using different colors to identify people who self-identified as belonging to different races: Blue for "White"; Green for "Black"; Red for "Asian"; Orange for "Hispanic"; and Brown for Other Race / Native American / Multi-Racial. You may find it easier to navigate if you click the button in the upper-left-hand corner to "Add Map Labels." Again, the neighborhoods around Lake Wingra may be especially easy for you to compare with the HOLC map above.
Consider what these two maps teach you about Madison. What might you be able to infer by comparing them?
These modified assignments have all also been added to Canvas, so you'll find the links there as well.
Discussion sections next week will mainly be devoted to reviewing for the final exam, so we probably won't have much if any time to discuss these readings, but we would still like you to read / view them, and you will certainly find them helpful for the final exam.
Thanks!
Bill
As I'll explain tomorrow in lecture, we're encouraging students in 469 to use our study of mining landscapes as an opportunity to practice the historical craft of browsing and wandering -- in this case, using Wikipedia as your starting point -- as a way of building contextual knowledge of historical complex topics like this one.
Just as a reminder, your assigned readings for discussion section this week as listed in the syllabus are these:
Thomas Andrews, "Dying with Their Boots On," Killing for Coal: Americas Deadliest Labor War (2008), 122-56.
Kathryn Morse, "The Nature of Gold Mining," The Nature of Gold: An Environmental History of the Klondike Gold Rush (2003), 89-114.
Robert Service, "The Trail of Ninety-Eight," Ballads of Cheechako (1909).
William Cronon, Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (1991), 148-206.
We hope you'll find all of these texts lively and engaging. They aren't long, and each offers a very different perspective on themes we're discussing in section this week. That said, none of them offers a very broad or integrated perspective on mining landscapes in North American history. That's where Wikipedia comes in.
Sometime during the next couple weeks, to put these readings in a wider context, please spend at least an hour (longer, if you’re so inclined) browsing Wikipedia entries that seem to you in any way relevant or interesting relating to the history of mining and mining landscapes in the United States and Canada.
We know you're busy with your place papers right now, and that you may not feel you have time to tackle this Wikipedia exercise until the Thanksgiving break next week. If so, that's fine. Our discussions in section this week are focusing mainly on the assigned readings in the syllabus listed above. But when you can find the time, please do try the wandering exercise I'll describe below, which is also included as an appendix to the note sheet for Lecture #19.
Although I'll offer below some suggestions you might want to peruse, it’s very important that you let yourself head off in whatever directions seem to you most intriguing.
The purpose of this Wikipedia assignment is for you to experience for yourself the serendipity of browsing ... wandering. The directions you choose to wander are your own, but your goal is to look for contexts and connections that will broaden and deepen your understanding of this subject. Landscape history (and history in general) rewards wandering. What we're explicitly asking you to do in Wikipedia this week is in fact worth doing for almost all the topics we're exploring in this course.
To maximize the serendipity of your browsing experience, it will help to remember that encyclopedia entries (especially in Wikipedia) are often conceptually and geographically nested, which is to say that you can approach a topic at different levels of generality.
To get an overview of major topics covered by Wikipedia, it's often helpful to start with the pages that list some of the most significant entries on a broad topical area. Wikipedia calls these "Category" pages. For mining, these might include (but are not limited to)
Category: Mining: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Mining
Category: History of Mining: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:History_of_mining
Category: Mining Disasters: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Mining_disasters
Category: Economic Geology: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Economic_geology
(You might try rummaging around for other category pages that feel especially relevant to this course.)
I often open pages like these in one tab of my browser, and then click on entries of interest to open additional tabs to see if they might interest me.
Please remember that you should never rely on an encyclopedia (whether it's Wikipedia or the Encyclopedia Britannica) as your main source, and you should not generally quote a source like Wikipedia. By their nature, encyclopedias synthesize what's found in other sources; they are never the original source for the information they contain (Wikipedia insists on this). They can be superb tools for orienting yourself to a topic you're exploring, but you should then use them to point yourself to other, more authoritative sources. You should not, for instance, rely on them as your main source of evidence for the place paper you'll be writing, except perhaps to confirm ancillary points that aren't central to your main research.
In my own perusal of Wikipedia entries relevant to the next couple lectures, the following all seemed like they might be of interest. I'll list them here just to get you started, but remember: these are NOT required readings. Please approach them as invitations for your own explorations of what Wikipedia has to offer about mining landscapes. You're the one discovering what you want to learn. You're the decider. You're the wanderer.
That's the spirit of play and serendipity that usually yields the best, most insightful, and most productive browsing ... even though, paradoxically, it doesn't initially seem like it's pointed at any very "productive" goal at all.
Here's my list of pages that might be worth perusing, but it's just my list. I do recommend that you read several entries that are fairly broad in their focus (e.g., "Mining" or "Gold Rush") and then begin to drill down conceptually or geographically or historically toward topics and places that are more focused (e.g., "California Gold Rush" or "History of Coal Mining in the United States" or "Copper Mining in Michigan"). After that, just let yourself go sideways toward anything that catches your fancy.
Mining: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mining
Gold Rush: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_rush
California Gold Rush: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Gold_Rush
Sutter's Mill: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sutter's Mill
Prospecting: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prospecting
Placer Mining: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Placer_mining
Silver Mining: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_mining
Comstock Lode: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comstock_Lode
Sutro Tunnel: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sutro_Tunnel
Hydraulic Mining: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydraulic_mining
Klondike Gold Rush: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klondike_Gold_Rush
Butte, Montana: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butte,_Montana
Western Federation of Miners: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Federation_of_Miners
History of Chinese Americans (includes significant section on Chinese role in the Gold Rush): https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Chinese_Americans
General Mining Act of 1872: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Mining_Act_of_1872
History of Coal Mining: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_coal_mining
History of Coal Mining in the United States: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_coal_mining_in_the_United_States
History of Coal Miners: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_coal_miners
Timeline of Mining in Colorado: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_mining_in_Colorado
Uranium Mining and the Navajo People: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_mining_and_the_Navajo_people
Hydraulic Fracturing in the United States: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydraulic_fracturing_in_the_United_States
History of the Oil Shale Industry in the United States: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_oil_shale_industry_in_the_United_States
Mining Accident: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mining_accident
Pendarvis, Wisconsin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pendarvis,_Wisconsin
Copper Mining in Michigan: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copper_mining_in_Michigan
Calumet and Hecla Mining Company: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calumet_and_Hecla_Mining_Company
Iron Ore: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_ore
Iron Mining in the United States: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_mining_in_the_United_States
Mesabi Range: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesabi_Range
Diamond Hoax of 1872: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamond_hoax_of_1872
Clarence King https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarence_King
I could go on for quite a while longer -- Wikipedia truly is a treasure trove -- but this should be enough for now. Have fun!!
Bill
P.S.: You may have noticed that I've inserted .m. as the second element in many of the Wikipedia entries I've given you. The general Wikipedia entry on "Mining" looks like this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mining
But if you add .m. to convert it to
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mining
you'll force your browser to format the page as if you were reading it on a mobile phone (hence ".m."). The mobile-formatted version of these pages omits the HTML frame that typically surrounds Wikipedia content, making it easier to copy and paste that content if you're gathering material for your notes.
P.P.S.: I've mentioned before in class that WIkipedia is one of my favorite tools when I'm traveling, so much so that I actually carry a downloaded copy of the entire English-language version of Wikipedia on my iPhone and iPad so I'll have access to this extraordinary resource even when I'm traveling in a foreign country or in a remote area of North America where I'm out of reach of cell phone. If that idea interests you, and you have a spare 35GB of space on your phone, I recommend a wonderful open-source piece of software called Kiwix that enables you to store downloaded Wikipedia and other open-source contact on your Windows, Mac, Android, and Linux devices. Here's the link if you're interested: http://www.kiwix.org
Friends--
I have an unusual conflict during part of my regular office hours slot next Wednesday morning, so will need to hold shorter office hours than usual on that day.
Because I know some of you may want to consult with me about your place papers next week, I'm holding the following special office hours in 5103 Humanities:
Tuesday, 11/13: 11am-12noon
Wednesday, 11/14: 11am-12noon
Please be sure to note these unusual times if you're hoping to talk with me during office hours next week.
Best of luck with your place papers as you enter the home stretch of this process.
Bill
Friends--
I have several random and relatively unrelated items to pass along to everyone take 469, so here they are in no particular order. Please review them carefully:
Remember that we'll be reading several chapters from Nature's Metropolis in section this week: pp 5-147, 207-59, 371-85. (you'll also read the lumbering chapter of the book in a couple weeks. Please be sure to bring the book to section, since you're likely to want to refer to it during our discussions this week. Nature's Metropolis is as important to the second half of the course as Car Country was to the first half, so you'll want to give it the time to read it carefully.
Don't forget that the place paper is due at the start of lecture on Monday, November 19. To get the most out of that assignment, you should be actively researching it now. It's also wise to plan to do an early draft, especially if you want to schedule a meeting to discuss that draft with folks at the History Lab or the Writing Center.
Remember that we expect you in your place paper to do several things:
1) Identify a theme of landscape history that you can explore in your chosen place by actually reading its landscape as a historical document. This is not simply a library assignment. We want you to interpret the landscape of your chosen place with evidence visible in the landscape today, whether via in-person visits, satellite images, on-the-ground photos, or any comparable sources.
2) That said, we also expect you to do research on your chosen place to find primary and secondary documents to help you understand how its past landscapes are and are not different from landscapes you see there today. You must have documents in order to do this assignment properly, which is why work at the Historical Society and elsewhere is so important.
3) Finally, we expect you to write a well-organized analysis and narrative of the landscape history of place in your very best prose.
Incidentally, we decided to reorganize the exemplary place papers written by past students that are archived on this page:
https://www.williamcronon.net/courses/469/469_place_papers.html
on past environmental change because of the focus of that course. Because 469 places more emphasis on various aspects of the built environment that may seem further afield from "nature," students writing place papers for 469 have a wider range of possible topics available to them than was true for students in 460. You'll now find these papers written for 469 at the top of the listing. That said, almost all of the place paper topics researched and written about by students in 460 would work equally well for this course, which is why we're still making all of those past papers available to you. If you've not yet read of them, this is an excellent time to do so. You'll almost certainly get ideas from them about approaches to take, possible sources to use, and different strategies for focusing and organizing your own paper.
To document the research in your place paper, please use a consistent citation format. Our preference is for you to use the Chicago Manual of Style, which is generally the standard style guide for books and journals published in the humanities and many of the social sciences. (You may also be familiar with the abridged version of the Chicago Manual that has appeared for many years as Kate L. Turabian's A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations, edited by Wayne C. Booth, Gregory G. Colomb, Joseph M. Williams, and the University of Chicago Press Editorial Staff [University of Chicago Press, 2013]).
You can find summary guides to citation formats using the style of the Chicago Manual on the following websites:
https://writing.wisc.edu/Handbook/DocChicago.html>
https://writing.wisc.edu/Handbook/PDF/chicago_turabian_uwmadison_writingcenter_june2013.pdf
The full Chicago Manual of Style can also be accessed online via UW-Madison's Library portal. It should be able to answer most questions you may have about how to cite a particular document, especially Chapter 14 on "Notes and Bibliography."
As we explained in the syllabus, plagiarism is a very serious academic offense, and is all too tempting to fall into in these days when copying and pasting with digital tools is so easy to do. For websites explaining the perils of plagiarism and the best ways to avoid it, see these helpful sites:
https://writing.wisc.edu/Handbook/QuotingSources.html
https://ctl.yale.edu/writing/using-sources
Finally, I added a few URLs to the end of the "Suggested Readings" section of the note sheet for last Wednesday's lecture on "Bounding the Land" to websites where you can find documents relating to the original land survey for any place in the U.S. where that survey took place. You might want to peruse them:
https://www.williamcronon.net/courses/469/handouts/469-bounding-property.html
Sorry for the long email; I hope some of this information is helpful to you. See you on Wednesday!
Bill
Friends--
Cynthia Bachhuber, who has been responsible for organizing our tours of the Wisconsin Historical Society this week, wants to make sure I pass along to you the information you'll need if you intend to do research in the WHS Archives. You need to register online before you can do so, and her instructions for the registration process are below. Remember that if you lose track of this email, you can always re-access it through the email archive for 469 that is linked from our course web page here:
https://www.williamcronon.net/courses/469/469_emails.html
And just to be clear: this online registration applies only to the WHS Archives on the 4th floor, not to the WHS Library on the 2nd floor.
Bill
WHS Archives Registration
1. Visit https://www.library.wisc.edu/my-account/Friends--
I discovered late last week that I somehow neglected to load onto our online collection of past place papers some of the best papers written by students in 469 back in Fall 2016. Since these papers were actually written for this course on "The Making of the American Landscape" (as opposed to all these others, which were written for 460, "American Environmental History), I wanted to call your attention to them, since they're in some ways more responsive to the emphases of this course than many of the others you can peruse on our course web page.
Everything you'll find on that page are excellent papers, but the following additions may be especially suggestive as you think about your papers. Here are the ones I've just added:
Jacob Grace, "A Look Back from Rock Gap: The Landscape and Agricultural History of a Family Farm in Northwest Missouri," 2016 PDF
Spencer Jastrow, "Behind the Thermostat – The Layered Landscapes of Campus Heating Infrastructure," 2016 PDF
Adele McKiernan, "The Catskill Mountain House: An Absent Presence in the Landscape," 2016 (misdated as 2011 in PDF) PDF
Colleen Schmit, "Dispersed Landscapes of Community in the Tenney-Lapham Neighborhood," 2016 PDF
Story Sandy, "The Village of Shorewood," 2016 PDF (Shorewood, Wisconsin, Milwaukee's North Shore)
Jenna Walsh, "Interrupting Frontier Progress: A Landscape History of Black Hawk Ridge," 2016 PDF
Enjoy!
Bill
Friends--
I'm writing with various details relating to our activities in 469 over the next couple weeks. Please read this email carefully; it includes some links that will be helpful to you in reviewing for Monday's midterm exam.
First, and most obviously, please remember that the midterm exam is this coming Monday, October 15, from 2:30-3:45pm (our regular class time) in 3650 Humanities (our regular classroom).
NB: Students who have McBurney accommodations for the exam should meet instead in 2125 Humanities starting at 2:30pm.
I promised at the review session to provide a link for a PDF of the PowerPoint presentation I used during the review. You'll likely find it quite helpful to peruse, especially if you were unable to attend the review session, since it gives examples of the kinds of questions you'll likely encounter on the exam:
https://www.williamcronon.net/courses/469/handouts/midterm-review-presentation-10-11-18.pdf
Also, remember in preparing for the map portion of the exam (for which you should answer 10 out of the 12 questions, no more, since every wrong answer counts against you), you'll want to review the list of mappable items that appears at the bottom of the note sheet for Lecture #4, "An Introduction to North America":
https://www.williamcronon.net/courses/469/handouts/469-intro-to-north-america.html
The question we used in discussion sections this past week to start building timelines for the blue book essay of the exam offers very helpful clues about the question you'll be answering on the actual exam. Here's a copy of that question to help focus your review process:
Christopher Wells argues that the United States was transformed over the course of the twentieth century into a landscape so completely dependent on the automobile that it merits the name Car Country. Because this transformation was so complex, it did not happen all at once, and many different technologies, laws, institutions, and causal forces contributed to its emergence. Select half a dozen of what seem to you to be the most important of these contributing causes and use them as benchmarks to narrate the history of how and why Car Country emerged as it did. Was the rise of Car Country inevitable? Why or why not?
The timelines we began to develop during discussion sections this past week were a start, but they were nowhere near detailed enough, or analytically developed enough, to do an adequate job of characterizing the evolution of Car Country over the course of the twentieth century. We strongly encourage you to keep elaborating those timelines as you reread, distill, and synthesize the arguments and examples in Christopher Wells's Car Country, being sure to identify major benchmarks and turning points in the ways automobiles and highways reshaped the American landscape, and the underlying causes that encouraged those changes.
You will almost certainly benefit from studying for the exam with other students in the class. You're welcome to'use the email address for your discussion section to contact other students if you'd like to find a time when several of you can meet together.
We will not be holding sections next week, and there is no formal reading assignment, but we would like you to use your free time to begin thinking about and working on your place paper. If you've not yet read Wayne Booth et al's book on The Craft of Research, now would be the ideal time to do so. Now would also be an excellent time to reread, carefully, the several pages of the syllabus that describe the place paper assignment in detail--and it would also be a good time to read some of the excellent place papers linked from our course web page that past students have written for this course or for 460:
https://www.williamcronon.net/courses/469/469_place_papers.html
Next week the staff of the Historical Society have very generously organized a series of tours to aid you in thinking about strategies for researching your place papers. The tours are immensely helpful, so please take one of them if you possibly can. Here's the schedule:
Wisconsin Historical Society Tours (meet in the First Floor Lobby, across the street from the Humanities Building) Tuesday, Oct 16, 4:00-5:00pm Wednesday, Oct 17, 4:00-5:00pm Thursday, Oct 18, 4:00-5:00pm Monday, Oct 22, 4:00-5:00pm Wednesday, Oct 24, 9:00-10:00am
Finally, we'll be devoting sections during the week of October 22 to detailed discussions of your proposed place paper topics. Toward that end, we'll expect each of you to make brief (two-minute) oral reports sharing the following information with your classmates:
Sorry for the very long email. I hope this is helpful. Have a good weekend, good luck with your studying, and we'll see you on Monday afternoon.
Bill
Friends--
First, I want to let you know that the University Bookstore received their copies of The Craft of Research this past week, so if you're still planning to buy your copy from them, you should stop by soon to pick one up. It's a wonderful book, and well worth reading in preparation for your place paper.
Second, as will often happen in this course, I didn't make it through all the material I would have liked to share with you in last Wednesday's lecture about digital mapping. In particular, in my haste to demonstrate the utility of using Google Images to search for online maps that might be of interest, I failed to finish demonstrating for you the power of exploring landscape features in the satellite views of Google Maps and especially Google Earth.
So, in the hope of persuading some of you to spend a few minutes clicking on some links and viewing some of the features I meant to show you toward the end of the lecture, let me pass along a few links.
Here are some striking examples of locations where satellite imagery can strikingly demonstrate the consequences of landscape history. Try clicking on the following Google Maps links:
Bingham Canyon Copper Mine, Utah:
https://goo.gl/maps/y6vboBoGvSD2
Butte, Montana (where the Berkeley Pit cooper mine came close to swallowing much of the town):
https://goo.gl/maps/upk3c2R41qM2
Wawa, Ontario (where an iron sintering plant has produced a diagonal path of stunted vegetation extending miles to the northeast of the town, leading to a classic early study of air pollution impacts on forests):
https://goo.gl/maps/Bi3yd4dooZn
Fort McMurray, Alberta (site of major tar sand petroleum production; if you visit this area in Google Earth and view older satellite imagery, you'll see how much the impacts of tar sand development have altered this landscape over the past two decades):
https://goo.gl/maps/fVkBMWhJ2EJ2
The Menominee Reservation in northern Wisconsin:
https://goo.gl/maps/JURL9cni2ZC2
Two features are worth noting in this one. First, if you'll zoom out, you'll see that differences in forestry practices on the reservation make its distinctive vegetation recognizable even from outer space; zoom out and you'll be struck by how much the reservation the stands out from surrounding areas, reflecting the very different environmental, cultural, and land-use histories there. Second, notice the light-green diagonal swath that cuts across the northwestern corner of the reservation from southwest to northeast. It's a striking example of a tornado's path through the forest, and if you examine the historic satellite images in Google Earth, you'll be able to date the year that the storm blew through.
That's enough for now! Ioffer these only as hors d'oeuvres for your own exploring of landscape features that might be of particular interest to you. Have fun, and we'll see you on Monday.
Bill
Friends--
I'm writing to let you know that I've just posted the note sheet for Monday's lecture, which is a whirlwind introduction to the North American continent. You'll find it here:
https://www.williamcronon.net/courses/469/handouts/469-intro-to-north-america.html
It relies on many maps, and I've supplied links to quite a few in the note sheet that you may find helpful to download. If you right click on the links in the note sheets and save them to a folder on your hard drive, they'll be easier for you to consult if you'd like to be able to do so.
Remember that we'll be doing tours of lower campus in discussion section this week, and will do so no matter what the weather. Please be sure to bring appropriate clothing: a raincoat (and an umbrella if possible!) if it's raining, and layers for warmth if it's chilly. There are several short readings this week that will enhance your experience of the walking tour, so please sure to have read those before section. They're listed in the syllabus, and there are links to the readings accessible via Canvas.
You're also expected this week to spend an hour or two perusing the maps we've laid out for your exploration in UW-Madison's Map Library on the third floor of Science Hall. You'll get a handout for that exercise in lecture on Monday, but it's also available on our course web page at this link:
https://www.williamcronon.net/courses/469/map_library_exercise.html
You'll get further instructions from your section leader, but we'd mainly like you to come to section next week with concrete examples and insights about the ways the various maps you'll be exploring in the Map changed your views of landscapes in the United States.
You'll be turning in your first written assignment (described in the syllabus) at the start of lecture on October 1. Since the paper (as well as that week's discussion section) depends on you're reading of Christopher Wells' Car Country, which is also among our most helpful readings in getting you started thinking about your final place paper. It's a long book, so the sooner you can get started reading it, the better. You'll definitely want to have finished it before you finish writing your October 1 paper and attending discussion section that week.
There are some tips about reading Car Country toward the bottom of our course web page, so you may want to take a look at those before starting the book.
As I mentioned in class, if you're having trouble laying your hands on physical copies of either Car Country or The Craft of Research (which should be available soon at the University Bookstore), both books are available for free chapter downloads via the UW-Madison libraries. Here are the links for finding them:
Christopher Wells' Car Country:
https://search.library.wisc.edu/catalog/9911082838702121
https://search.library.wisc.edu/catalog/9910641153702121
Wayne Booth et al, The Craft of Research, 4th edition:
https://search.library.wisc.edu/catalog/9912307166302121
I think that's all for now. See you Monday!
Bill
Friends--
First, a word of apology. I was married last Saturday--a wonderful event in my life--and have been much distracted over the past month planning for the wedding. I discovered only after having photocopied our class syllabus that the Library E-Reserves service on which I've long relied was shut down this summer and is no longer available. As a result, I've been scrambling to transfer this function over to the new Canvas system. This means that the photocopied syllabi I distributed in class on Wednesday aren't completely accurate, since they refer to Library E-Reserves rather than Canvas as the place students should go to get downloadable readings listed in the syllabus.
You'll find revised versions of the syllabus downloadable from our course web page at https://www.williamcronon.net/courses/469/, which I hope you’ll continue to rely on as our main source of information about the course.
That said, Canvas is now our best available tool for giving you access to readings other than our three assigned books, so you will now find our weekly readings listed under the Assignments tab of Canvas.
I mentioned at the start of Wednesday's lecture that the Jewish High Holidays may pose scheduling challenges for some students over the next two weeks. If you'll miss Monday's lecture because of Rosh Hashanah, or the lecture on September 19 because of Yom Kippur, remember that you'll find detailed notes for those lectures on our course web page.
If Yom Kippur prevents you from attending your regular section during the week of September 17, please feel free to attend any other section that fits your schedule that week, since we'll be taking tours of campus that will likely be quite helpful to you in thinking about your final place paper. Please consult with your section leader if the High Holidays pose attendance problems for you that we might be able to help you solve.
Again, my apologies for not having realized that Library E-Reserves were going to be shut down this fall. I'll get our course readings migrated over to Canvas as quickly as I can. Please come to section next week with any questions you may have about this, or anything else on the syllabus that would be helpful for us to discuss in section.
Bill
Friends—
Welcome to History/Geography/Environmental Studies 469, "The Making of the American Landscape," in which you are currently enrolled. We're delighted you've decided to join us for the semester!
This is a relatively new course, taught for only the second time at UW-Madison and with few models at other colleges or universities, so it's taken longer than usual to nail down all of its details. I've just updated the course webpage at
www.williamcronon.net/courses/469/
where you’ll find links to the full syllabus in both HTML and PDF format.
Please bookmark this page, since we’ll be posting lecture notes and other course materials on it as the semester unfolds.
Our first lecture meeting is tomorrow on Wednesday, September 5, from 2:30-3:45pm in 3650 Humanities. PLEASE NOTE: We will NOT be holding discussion sections this week; the first of those will take place during the week of September 10.
Here are a few more details that may be helpful for you to know as you prepare for the new semester.
We’ve opted not to hold a comprehensive final exam. Instead, we’ll hold an in-class final exam on the day of our final lecture meeting, December 12, covering only course material from after the midterm. (The mid-term exam is in class on Monday, October 15.) We will hold special evening review sessions for the midterm and final on Thursday, October 11 and Monday, December 10, both in the evening from 7:00-8:30pm. Please mark these dates on your calendar and plan accordingly.
If you are currently registered for a section in the course that you cannot actually attend, you must drop that section and register for another section that you are able to attend. You cannot simply switch sections informally, and you can only change to a section that has openings available. Be forewarned that 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 trying to find a section that will work for you, you should check the Registrar's website for 469 as frequently as you can between now and the end of registration to see if anything opens up; if it does, you should grab the open slot that works for you 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.
If you are an Honors undergraduate or a graduate student not already registered for Section 301, which I myself teach from 8:30-9:40am on Wednesdays, and if you would like to be considered for permission to transfer into that section, please send an email to me at wcronon@wisc.edu at your earliest convenience (and no later than right after the first lecture) so I'll know of your interest and your reasons for being interested in the Honors/grad section. I'll make decisions about admitting a few more students into that section in the next couple days, by the end of this week. The sooner you can be in touch with me if you're interested in transferring, the better.
Again, we have a course page on my personal website at http://www.williamcronon.net/courses/469/ which you'll want to get to know well. Handouts will appear on it with outline notes for each individual lecture, along with many other resources relating to the course. I've just uploaded and provided links to the full syllabus, which you'll find formatted both for printing and for on-screen viewing. The HTML version of the syllabus can be accessed at www.williamcronon.net/courses/469/469_syllabus_fall_2018.html which I'd urge you to read carefully as soon as possible (but remember that this is NOT the best version for printing). It gives a comprehensive overview of all assignments, including the three required books that are on sale at the University Bookstore in case you want to try to acquire copies at more favorable prices. Printed copies of the syllabus will be available for everyone at the first lecture. A PDF version is available from the course web page as well. The online version linked above has the advantage of including many active (clickable) links to web pages, so do take a look at it in case some of those links might be of interest to you.
Pay special attention to the very detailed section of the syllabus describing written assignments for the course. These include the final "place paper" that you'll be turning in at the end of the semester, which counts for 30% of your grade. We encourage you to be thinking about and working on your place paper all semester long. The sooner you can identify the place about which you'll be writing, the better able you'll be to integrate material from the course into what you have to say about it. You'll find many samples of place papers written by past students accessible via our course page, and those will give you a better sense of the kinds of places you might wish to write about.
As you can probably already tell, we rely heavily on email to communicate with students in 469, so please get in the habit of checking email regularly for communications like this one. (Most won't be nearly as long as this one!) We archive all of the most important of these emails on the course website at www.williamcronon.net/courses/469/469_emails.html which is accessible along with everything else via the course web page at www.williamcronon.net/courses/469/ ... another good reason to make sure you bookmark this last link and visit it regularly. Give it a try now and you'll find this email already there.
That's all for now. We're looking forward to seeing you in the next couple days. Welcome aboard!
Bill Cronon and the rest of the 469 Team,
Rachel Boothby
Carly Griffith
Rebecca Summer