Environmental Studies 900
Historical and Cultural Methods in Environmental Research
(The "CHE Methods Seminar")

Typically offered each spring, the CHE Methods seminar is one of the most important curricular offerings of the Nelson Institute’s Center for Culture, History, and Environment.  It has several goals:

• It introduces graduate students from a wide array of departments and programs to different disciplinary and interdisciplinary methods for studying past environmental change and the cultural human cultural contexts within which it occurs.
  
  
• It explores the disparate forms of evidence that can be used to reconstruct past environmental change and its human meanings.
  
  
• It strives to build a strong sense of community among graduate students and faculty members at UW-Madison who share an interest in past environmental change by creating a context within which grad students from different departments and programs can work together and become colleagues while getting to know faculty members associated with CHE.
  
  
• Written assignments for the seminar are designed in part to lay the groundwork for the CHE Place-Based Workshop, an annual field trip that occurs each May.  Teams of students in the seminar will produce written documents, web resources, and/or oral reports to prepare participants in the workshop for the places they’ll be visiting.  This year’s workshop will focus on energy production, distribution, and consumption in the upper Midwest, so a key strand of the seminar will use energy-related questions to practice the disciplinary and interdisciplinary skills and methods we’re exploring in the rest of the course.

Because the seminar strives to reflect and incorporate the interests of the graduate students who are taking it, and also those of the many CHE faculty members who participate in panel discussions, this syllabus is being left relatively open at the start of the semester.  The syllabus will evolve as the goals and interests of seminar members become clearer, and as CHE faculty members contribute readings for the sessions in which they participate, so that the final syllabus will not be complete until the end of the semester.

Syllabus (now current for Spring 2010):

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Research Teams: Major Energy Resources

Biofuels: Adam Mandelman, Emma Schroeder
Coal: Rachel Gross, Trish O'Kane
The Grid: Cathy Day, Kevin Gibbons
Hydro: Dee Finnegan, Kiersten Warning
Nuclear: Brian Hamilton, Katie Wirka
Oil & Natural Gas: Andy Davey, Jesse Gant
Solar: Ginny Carlton, Liese Dart
Wind: Casey Meehan, David Plastrik

Research Teams: Eclectic Perspectives on Energy in History and Culture

Changing Household Uses of Energy: Rachel Gross, Adam Mandelman
Energy, Food, and Agriculture: Andy Davey, Emma Schroeder
Energy in Transportation: Jesse Gant, David Plastrik
Energy, Labor, and Social Justice: Dee Finnegan, Brian Hamilton
Environmental Impacts and Toxicities of Different Energy Sources: Liese Dart, Kevin Gibbons
Large-Scale Patterns of Energy Consumption: Cathy Day, Kiersten Warning
Past Energy Crises: Casey Meehan, Katie Wirka
Wisconsin's Little-Known Dependence on Carbon County, Wyoming: Ginny Carlton, Trish O'Kane

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