History/Geography 932
Endgame Summary

From: William Cronon [mailto:wcronon@wisc.edu]
Sent: 11/16/2008 5:06 PM
To: history932-1-f08@lists.wisc.edu
Subject: IMPORTANT: Endgame Details for Remainder of Semester: PLEASE READ CAREFULLY

Friends—

OK, let’s see if I can summarize what we’ve decided for our seminar schedule for the rest of the semester.  I believe we’ve agreed on the following:

1) The following teams are responsible for getting to me a final draft of their web pages by no later than Sunday, November 30 (earlier submissions are of course most welcome). 

Process Groups:
How to Frame Research Questions (Abby, Po-Yi)
What are the Documents? (Steel, Jesse)
How to search and build bibliography (Michelle, Kevin, Brien)
Note-taking (Emma, Cathy)
Outlining, how to build an argument/narrative (Jacquelyn, Steve)

Source Groups:
Maps and GIS (Genya, Brien)
Interviews (Trish, Cathy, Kevin)
Images (Steve, Po-Yi)
Periodicals / Newspapers / Magazines (Michelle, Steel)

We will review and discuss these pages (and any other submitted by November 3) at our seminar meeting on December 3.

2) The following teams are responsible for getting to me a final draft of their web pages by no later than Sunday, December 7 (earlier submissions are of course most welcome).

Process Groups:
Drafting/revising/editing/communicating your findings (Genya, Trish)
Positioning your argument within a larger scholarly/scientific terrain (Liese, Brian)

Source Groups:
Legal records / Government Documents (Liese, Emma)
Manuscript and artifact collections (Brian, Jesse)
Scientific and Quantitative data (Abby, Jacquelyn)

We will review any pages submitted after November 30 at our seminar meeting on December 10.

3) As a reminder, all revised web pages must be based on the November 15 version of Kevin’s template (creating an entirely new document from that template and pasting revised content into the new document).  You will save me a lot of time and trouble if you hew as closely as you can to that template, and add no extra formatting beyond italicized and bold fonts.  All other formatting should be accomplished by copying and pasting elements of Kevin’s template into the appropriate locations in your own document based on that template. 

4) Remember too that you will need to submit to me separate full-resolution files for any images you want included on your page.  These will generally be JPG (best for photos) or GIF (best for vector graphics—graphs and comparable images consisting entirely of lines) files.  It would help me if you could use a similar naming convention for your image files as you have for your webpage files, though in the case of images there need not be any version number or date in the name of the file.  Instead, if your final web page will be called (for instance) 932_interviewing.htm, then the sequence of images, in order, should have the names 932_interviewing_fig1.jpg, 932_interviewing_fig2.jpg, 932_interviewing_fig3.jpg, with appropriate callouts in the web page so I’ll know where to place them.  You should still embed these images in the Word file you submit to me, along with the name of the associated image file, so I’ll know where to place them when I create the final pages.

5) I have decided to flip the environmental history subjects (as opposed to the website) that we will discuss at our seminar meetings on November 26 and December 3, so that our energy discussion is now on November 26 and our Hurricane Katrina on December 3.  I’m in some ways regarding these two weeks as continuous, and will be adjusting our discussion on both dates to cover whatever material seems most interesting to you.  As you’ll see when you review our on-line syllabus, I’ve now made the remaining pages of Nye optional, and will be relying mainly on a discussion of film materials on November 27.  I would still like you to do some reading about Hurricane Katrina for the December 3 discussion, links to which are provided on a hidden page of my website that is only accessible through the link I've sent you by email.  Please keep track of it, since you cannot access this page through any visible link on the site.

6) For the final week of the course (either in our regular seminar meeting or at our pancake breakfast), you’ll want to read (fairly quickly is fine) the on-line documents relating to the 2004 “Death of Environmentalism” debate and the symposium Adam Rome organized as editor of Environmental History on “What’s Next for Environmental History?”  To make this more accessible, I’ve collated all the pages of the symposium into a single document which you can download from a link on the syllabus.  It’s 69 pages long.

7) Be sure to review all these various changes in the on-line form of our syllabus at
http://www.williamcronon.net/handouts/932_syllabus_fall_2008.htm
I’ve also added a link to this email for future reference toward the top of our course web page at
http://www.williamcronon.net/courses/932.htm

8) We have agreed that we’ll be having a pancake breakfast together on Saturday, December 13, from 9am-12noon at my house at 2027 Chadbourne Avenue (directions to follow later).  I’ll supply pancakes, coffee, and juice, and no one should feel obligated to bring anything if they’re not so inclined...but if you want to bring along something that will complement the main part of the meal (including genuine maple syrup, which I do not supply!), feel free to do so. 

Whew.  I think that’s all for now.  See you Wednesday.

Bill