Fall 2007
History / Geography / Environmental
Studies 460
AMERICAN ENVIRONMENTAL H
LECTURER:
SECTION LEADERS: Andrew Case, Bill Cronon, Nicolaas
Mink, Travis Tennessen.
Office Hours: 9:45-11:45am Wednesdays, 5103
Humanities, first come first served. I
would prefer to see you during regular hours, but will try to meet with you at
other times if necessary. Please don't
just stop by my office if you need to see me at times other than my office
hours, however; email me first and make an appointment. I generally meet with students for
appointments in 443 Science Hall.
TA Offices: Email is the best way to get in touch with your section
leader if you need to contact them.
Andrew’s email is ancase@wisc.edu; Nic’s is njmink@wisc.edu; and
Travis’s is tptennessen@wisc.edu. They will circulate office hours and
locations at the first section meeting of the semester.
LECTURES will be held
on Mondays and Wednesdays, from 2:30pm-3:45pm, in 2650 Humanities.
INTRODUCTION
Environmental history, a relatively new field, studies the changing
relationships between human beings and the natural world through time. Despite being numbered at the 400-level, this
course is intended as an introduction to this exciting new field of scholarship,
with no prerequisites. It assumes no
background in American history, geography, or environmental studies, and offers
a general survey that can be valuable for students interested in any of these
fields, from entry-level undergraduates through graduate students. Although the course is intended to be
challenging, it is also meant to be fun: any student willing to attend
lectures, do the readings, and work hard should be able to enjoy and do well in
it. Our central premise throughout will
be that much of the familiar terrain of American history looks very different
when seen in its environmental context, and that one can learn a great deal
about history, geography, and the environment by studying them together. All too often, historians study the human
past without attending to nature. All
too often, scientists study nature without attending to human history. We will try to discover the value of
integrating these different perspectives, and argue that the humanistic
perspectives of historians and geographers are absolutely crucial if one hopes
to understand contemporary environmental issues.
We will be approaching American environmental history from
at least three different angles. First,
we will ask how various human activities have historically depended on and
interacted with the natural world: how have natural phenomena and resources
shaped patterns of human life in different regions of the continent? Second, we will trace the shifting attitudes
toward nature held by different Americans during various periods of their
nation's history: how have the human inhabitants of this continent perceived and
attached meanings to the world around them, and how have those attitudes shaped
their cultural and political lives?
Finally, we will ask how human attitudes and activities have worked
together to reshape the American landscape: how have people altered the world
around them, and what have been the consequences of those alterations for
natural and human communities alike? At
the same time, we will be tracing the evolution of environmental politics in
the
A NOTE ON THE
This syllabus provides a detailed outline of what we'll be covering in the
course, and we strongly advise you to refer to it often as you plan your
studying.
Ari Kelman, A River and Its City, HT243.U62 L685 2003
Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac, QH81 L56 1966
Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside, GE197 R66 2001
Donald Worster, Dust Bowl, F786 W87
Note that you will not be reading all of these books in
their entirety, and all are available on reserve in Helen C. White library and/or
at the Wisconsin Historical Society Library.
You needn't purchase all of them, and you should feel free to read
library copies or share books with classmates.
Other readings are available as course handouts or an electronic
reserve.
EXAMINATIONS
There will be two exams, a midterm and a final, each covering their respective
halves of the course in their objective sections; the final will also require
you to write comprehensive essays covering the course as a whole.
THE PLACE PAPER (5-6 pages; 6-10 pages for Honors undergrads and grad
students):
This is due at the beginning of lecture on Monday, November 26, and is intended
to give you an opportunity actually to do environmental history yourself
as a way of synthesizing what you've learned from the entire course. In it, you are to choose some place--either located
in
Since we'd like you
to be thinking about this paper from the very start of the semester, we'd like to
offer you some suggestions for the how best to approach it. Remember that the most important aspect of
this assignment is for you to have an experience trying to “read” an actual landscape. We fully understand that you don’t know
enough environmental history to construct a complete or fully accurate
narrative of environmental changes that have shaped your chosen place. What we’re looking for instead is that you
take a long, careful look at the place and try to see it with unfamiliar eyes,
taking nothing for granted but looking at everything you see there as if you’d
never seen it before. Then ask how the things you see might have come to be
there. (This assignment may go better and be more fun if you imagine that
you’re a visitor from outer space who’s just landed and is trying to make sense
of all the strange things you see around you: why on earth do people live this
way? How did the lives of earlier inhabitants
leave traces that can still be seen?) As
the first lecture of the course suggested, the trick is to ask as many
questions as you can about landscapes you ordinarily take for granted. (Remember, you can go back and reread that
first lecture, which is printed as an essay called "Kennecott
Journey" in the book Under an Open Sky: Rethinking America’s Western
Past, edited by myself; a PDF version of it is even more conveniently
available on the electronic reserve list for the course; or on my website near
the bottom of the page at http://history.wisc.edu/cronon/Writing.htm.) Use materials from the readings and from the
lectures to help you think about the kinds of questions you want to ask, and do
the best job you can answering those questions with the things you see on the
ground. Unless you have a strong
background in field ecology, you’d probably do well not to worry too much about
trying to identify individual species of plants and animals, though you should
at least look closely at these just to see what you can figure out about the
way they’re arranged on the land; more importantly, though, look at the broader
patterns of boundaries, buildings, street patterns, fence lines, utility
services, etc., instead.
If you’re having
trouble choosing a place to write about, consider these suggestions right here
in
·
Walk
along a railroad track for a mile or more (the one behind the Kohl Center that has
become a bike path west of the intersection of Regent Street and Monroe Street
would be a good choice) and think about its relation to the surrounding
landscape. Ask how adjacent sites relate
to the railroad, and how those relations may have changed with time. In what ways does the railroad divide the
surrounding land, and in what ways does it connect it? How might these divisions and connections
have changed with time?
·
Spend
an hour or two in a cemetery and see what you can learn from it as a historical
document (the ones on both sides of the Speedway, just beyond
·
Drive
or bicycle west from the UW stadium along Regent Street, Speedway, and Mineral
Point Road until you’re well out into the agricultural countryside (if you can,
go as far as Pine Bluff, or even to the point where the road finally ends at
Highway 78, which would be a round trip of 20-30 miles). As you ride, look very closely at the
changing spatial arrangement of streets, buildings, and settlement
patterns. How do houses change? Look at their sizes, styles, presence or
absence of garages and porches, nearness to neighboring houses, sizes of front
and back yards, relation of residential and non-residential buildings, etc.,
etc. Look at the presence or absence of
green space. As you drive west, you’re
essentially moving through neighborhoods that were built in each succeeding
decade of the twentieth century. The
spatial changes you see directly reflect chronological changes in the history
of
·
Try
comparing two different residential neighborhoods in
·
Find
the “
·
Walk
to the end of Picnic Point and spend time looking at the skyline of
Remember, the most
important goal of this assignment is to look at a place, ask questions about
it, and think about its past with reference to the historical and geographical
phenomena you’ve learned about in this course.
This is much harder when you’re worrying about it in the abstract than
when you’re actually doing it. It really
doesn’t matter what place you pick. You
could literally go to anywhere in
Although this is not
primarily a paper based on written documents‑-we really do want you to
have the experience of trying to read an actual landscape‑-we strongly
encourage you to track down at least a few documents that will help you
understand the changing landscape of your chosen place. For instance, looking at old photographs can
be wonderfully suggestive about how your place has changed in the past. If you’re writing about
There are a number of
ways you could learn more about your chosen place. The suggestions I’ve listed below relate mainly
to
·
Look
at old photographs of your chosen place.
The State Historical Society’s Iconographic Collection (located in the
Archives on the 4th floor) has a vast collection of images of places from
·
Look
at a series of maps of your chosen place to see how it has changed over
time. The Cartographic Collection of the
Geography Library in Science Hall can be very helpful here. Aerial photographs might also be very
suggestive if they’re available.
·
If
you've chosen an urban place, check out the amazing collection of bird's-eye
views, most published during the nineteenth century, that have been digitized
on the Library of Congress's American Memory website. The URL for these is: http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/gmdhtml/gmdhome.html. Check under "Cities and Towns" and
search for the place about which you're writing, but don't hesitate to explore
other parts of the website as well. The
American Memory website is an extraordinary source for digital documents:
photos, maps, texts, almost anything you can think of.
·
In
the late 1920s or early 1930s, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources
produced an extraordinary series of
“Land Inventory Maps” which show the uses of land for every township in
the state. These are available at the
Archives of the Wisconsin Historical Society, and can be very helpful indeed
for helping you understand changing rural land use. (You can read more about this amazing
cartographic resource at
http://steenbock.library.wisc.edu/general/bordner.html, and access the actual
maps at
http://webcat.library.wisc.edu:3200/EcoNatRes/
under “Land Economic Inventory.”
·
If
you want to go even further back in time, you could look at the original land
survey records of the 1830s and 1840s, getting a rough sense of what the land
looked like when the first American surveyors came through to impose the grid
system upon it. These maps, along with
the original surveyors notes, are now also available on-line, so you can peruse
them for places you know at
http://libtext.library.wisc.edu/SurveyNotes/.
·
Track
the changing population of the place in the manuscript census, which is
available for every year between 1840 and 1930 except 1890 (for which the
census records were destroyed in a fire).
Microfilms of the census for every state in the country are available at
the Historical Society. These will tell
you who lived in a place, their family relationships, their birth places, their
occupations, etc. If you’re writing
about a rural place in
·
If
you’re studying an urban area, look at old city directories, which often list
the residents and businesses of a community not just alphabetically but
according to their street address. A
directory enables you almost literally to walk down the same street in the past
that you’ve walked down in the present, seeing how the people and businesses
have changed in the interval.
·
Look
at old county atlases or histories for your place. These were published for many counties in the
·
And
of course: talk with people who have lived in your place for a long
time.
ADVICE ABOUT HOW TO
WRITE YOUR PLACE PAPER (WITH THANKS TO ITS UNKNOWN AUTHOR)
Finally, here are some tips about how to approach the writing
of your place paper, and also about how we'll be grading it. I've adopted these from the excellent writing
standards that a colleague at the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies
uses, and my colleague in turn adapted them from rubrics like this that have
circulated widely on the Web. I would
love to be able to give credit to their original author, but haven’t been able
to determine who that that person might be (if anyone can figure this out, I’d
be very grateful to know!). This text
has been slightly modified to fit this course, but are otherwise borrowed
pretty completely from my colleague’s version of the rubric.
Your goal in this Place Paper is to offer an original
interpretation of your chosen landscape based on your own observations and
research on the one hand, and on course readings and lectures on the other hand. We will evaluate your work using the
following criteria:
STRUCTURE: Begin your paper by introducing
the reader to your place, and by orienting the reader to the major questions
and interpretive approaches you intend to use for understanding it. It's fine to start with an anecdote or a
description of the place if you think that's the best way to proceed, but be
sure to clarify early in the paper the main themes you'll be addressing. Following your introduction, build your essay
as a series of well-structured paragraphs.
Each paragraph should have a topic sentence, and usually 3 to 5 additional
sentences that clearly support that topic sentence. Each paragraph should explain one major idea,
not 3 or 4. Each paragraph should have a
clear connection to the next. Pay
attention to transitions! End with a strong conclusion that tells readers what
they've learned about your place and why they should care about the
interpretation you're offering of its history.
ANALYSIS: Why should the reader believe you?
What arguments for and against your thesis make sense? How can you disprove
counter-arguments, or account for evidence that seems to contradict your
thesis? Your analysis should offer new ways to think of the material. All ideas in the paper should flow
logically. Your argument should be
identifiable, reasonable, and sound.
Support your thesis with arguments based on evidence from your chosen
landscape and from the primary and secondary sources you've researched. All sources should be clearly and accurately
identified in footnotes or endnotes using a consistent citation format from a
manual such as Kate L. Turabian's Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses,
and Dissertations, itself based on the classic
STYLE: We will reward clear, active,
powerful writing. PLEASE do not use the
passive voice. Do not start sentences
with "It is....", "There is..." or "There are...."
Use active verbs. Revise your paper to
remove wordiness, redundancy, passive voice, vagueness, and inactive verbs.
Make sure that your grammar and spelling are correct. Careless errors, especially run-ons and comma
splices, WILL lower your grade.
For example: This is an example of BAD writing: "It can
be shown that farmland on the
This is an example of BETTER writing: "Farmers on the
What's the difference? In the first sentence, "It can
be shown" is in the passive voice, starts with the word "It,"
and is wordy, redundant filler. The
phrase doesn't wake up the reader, and it doesn't convey any meaning. Get rid of it.
The phrase "farmland was harmed" is an example of
the passive voice. Do your absolute best to get rid of the passive voice. Your writing will be much more interesting
and precise. The passive voice is
usually a vague copout: you don't have to say who did what and why. Revising
into active voice makes you think about who is responsible. For example, the
second example tells us exactly who harmed the soil: "farmers plowed on
steep slopes, causing soil erosion."
ORIGINALITY: Although you can get a good grade
(a B) for presenting arguments developed in lecture and section, an A paper is
one that develops original insights and arguments. We strongly encourage you to think for
yourselves about the place you've chosen, giving evidence from course materials
and readings, but pushing your insights based on your own observations and
research.
GRADING STANDARDS FOR
PAPERS:
The
Analysis: You support every point with at least one example
from your primary sources, all of which are flawlessly annotated using a
standard citation format. You integrate
quoted material into your sentences well. Your analysis is fresh and exciting,
posing new ways to think of the material. You anticipate and successfully
defuse counter-arguments.
Style: Your sentence structure, grammar, spelling, and
citations are excellent. You have NO
run-on sentences or comma splices. Your
writing style is lively, active, and interesting. You use active verbs, and minimize the
passive voice. You are not wordy or
redundant.
Originality: Your narrative and arguments show a great deal
of independent insight and originality.
The Very Good Paper
(AB 88-93) Structure:
Your thesis and narrative are clear, insightful, and original. Your argument flows logically and is
sound. You may have a few unclear
transitions. You end with a strong
conclusion.
Analysis: You give examples to support most points, and you
integrate quotes into sentences; your notes are nearly perfect. Your analysis is clear and logical, and even
makes sense. You acknowledge
counter-arguments.
Style: Your sentence structure, grammar, spelling, and
citations are good. You have no more
than one run-on sentence or comma splice. Your writing style is solid and
clear. You use active verbs, and
minimize the passive voice. You are not
wordy or redundant.
Originality: Your arguments show independent thought.
The Good Paper (B
82-87) Structure:
Your thesis and narrative are clear, but may not be insightful, original, or
easily identified. Your argument is
generally clear and appropriate, although it may wander occasionally. You may
have a few unclear transitions, or paragraphs without strong topic sentences. You
may end without much of a conclusion.
Analysis: You give evidence to support most points, but some
evidence may appear where inappropriate, and not all are accurately cited. Your
argument usually flows logically and makes sense, although some gaps in logic
may exist. You may fail to address counter-arguments.
Style: Your writing style is clear, but not always lively,
active, or interesting. You sometimes
use the passive voice. You may become
wordy or redundant. Your sentence structure, grammar, and spelling are strong
despite occasional lapses.
Originality: You do a solid job of synthesizing material
presented in lectures and readings, but do not develop your own insights or
conclusions.
The Borderline Paper
(BC 77-81) Structure:
Your thesis and narrative may be unclear, vague, or unoriginal, and may provide
little structure for the paper. Your
paper may wander, with few transitions, few topic sentences, and little
logic. Your paragraphs may not be
organized coherently.
Analysis: You give examples to support some but not all
points. Your points often lack supporting evidence, or else you use evidence
inappropriately, often because there may be no clear point. Your quotes may be poorly integrated into
sentences. You may give a quote, but
then fail to analyze it or show how it supports your argument. Your logic may
fail, or your argument may be unclear. You may not address
counter-arguments. Your end may dwindle
off without a conclusion.
Style: Your writing style is not always clear, active, or
interesting. You use the passive voice,
or become wordy or redundant. You have
repeated problems in sentence structure, grammar, punctuation, citation style,
or spelling. You may have several run-on sentences or comma splices.
Originality: You do a fair job synthesizing material
presented in lectures and sections, but do not develop your own insights or
conclusions.
The "Needs
Help" Paper (C 70-76) Structure: Your thesis and narrative are difficult to identify, or
may be a bland restatement of an obvious point.
Your structure may be unclear, often because your thesis is weak or
non-existent. Your transitions are confusing and unclear. Your paragraphs show
little structure. The paper is a loose collection of statements, rather than a
cohesive argument.
Analysis: Your examples are few or weak. Citations are
flawed or missing altogether. You fail
to support statements, and the evidence you do give is poorly analyzed or
integrated into the paper. Your argument
may be impossible to identify. Ideas may
not flow at all, usually because there is no argument to support. The view of
the topic may seem simplistic, with little effort to grasp possible alternative
views.
Style: Your writing has problems in sentence structure,
grammar, and diction. You have frequent major errors in citation style,
punctuation, and spelling. You may have many run-on sentences and comma
splices.
Originality: You do a confusing or poor job synthesizing
material presented in lectures and sections, and do not develop your own
insights or conclusions.
The Bad Paper (D or F
0-69): A bad paper shows minimal lack of effort or
comprehension . The arguments are very difficult to understand owing to major
problems with mechanics, structure, and analysis. The paper has no identifiable thesis, or an
incompetent thesis. It's difficult to
tell that you've come to class.
In summary: we ask that you think seriously and creatively
about the content of this paper, and that you write it as well as you know
how. You will be evaluated for the
quality and concision of your prose as well as for the breadth and depth of the
thought you put into it. That said, please
try to relax and have fun with the essay: it's your chance to play with the
ideas in the course, and to test out different ways of looking at this
complicated material. Be forewarned that late essays will be
marked down by at least one-third of a grade unless other arrangements
are made well prior to the due date.
WEEKLY OUTLINE OF LECTURES AND
ASSIGNMENTS
IMPORTANT: In the following outline, lecture topics are
arranged into thematic "weeks" that do NOT correspond
with ordinary calendar weeks, so don't be confused about this. For the purposes of this course, most
"weeks" consist of a Wednesday lecture, the following Monday lecture,
and the following section; this way, all discussion sections will be assured of
having heard the same lectures and done the same readings by the time they
meet. Occasionally (usually right before
an exam), one of these thematic "weeks" may involve a number of lectures
less than or more than two. The parenthetic number after each week's
title is the approximate number of pages of reading assigned for that week.