LECTURER: Bill Cronon (he/him/his)
SECTION LEADERS: Zada Ballew (she/her/hers), Bill Cronon (he/him/his), Brianna Lafoon (she/her/hers), Thomas Kivi (he/him/his)
Bill's Contact Information: The best way to contact me is via email at wcronon@wisc.edu, but please use this sparingly; I often receive dozens of emails per day and it's all I can do (and sometimes quite a lot more!) to keep up with them all. If you don’t hear back from me in a timely way, please just resend your email—and try to forgive me for frequently getting swamped with the heavy volume of messages I receive!
Bill’s Website: Bill’s website is at www.williamcronon.net, and the page for this course can be found at https://www.williamcronon.net/courses/460/. Be sure to bookmark and keep track of this link, since the page has many handouts and other materials helpful for students in the course (I will keep adding new content to it throughout the semester). If you happen to lose track of it, a Google search of “Cronon 460” should yield this page as the top hit. There will also be links in Canvas to the relevant pages on Bill’s website, so please be sure you’ve learned how to access and navigate our course Canvas page to find lectures, readings, videos, discussion boards, and other content relating to the course.
Bill's Office Hours: My regular office hours are from 10:00am-12:00noon on Wednesdays. Unless I inform you otherwise, I’ll hold them using BB Collaborate, and will meet with students on a first-come-first-served basis. You’ll need to enter my online office hours space and wait in the waiting room until I admit you (we’ll give you instructions about how to do this), so please be sure you’ve got something to do in case you need to wait for a while. If the topic you wish to discuss with me is likely to require more than 10-15 minutes, please email me to schedule a different meeting time.
TA Contacts: Email is the best way to get in touch with your section leader if you need to contact them. Zada Ballew’s email address is zballew@wisc.edu; Brianna Lafoon’s is lafoon@wisc.edu; and Thomas Kivi’s is kivi@wisc.edu. All will circulate protocols for arranging online consultations by no later than the first section meeting of the semester.
LECTURES are asynchronous and can be viewed (and re-viewed) at any time. They will typically be posted by no later than each of our scheduled meeting times on Mondays and Wednesdays, from 2:30-3:45pm. Please be forewarned that they are fully illustrated 75-minute video lectures, so you’ll want to make sure you’ve scheduled time to view them. The video files are generally larger than 500mb, so you’ll also want to be sure you have adequate bandwidth for streaming them. Feel free to pause and take breaks if you find the 75-minute blocks too tiring; I generally give students a minute to stand up and stretch in the middle of in-person lectures, so you may want to make a habit of doing that as you watch the videos as well.
Environmental history studies changing relationships between human beings and the natural world through time—probably a very different approach to history from what you studied in high school. Despite being numbered at the 400-level, this course is intended as an introduction to this exciting and still relatively unfamiliar field of scholarship, with no prerequisites. It assumes little or no background knowledge of 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 advanced 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 environmental context, and that one can learn a great deal about history, geography, and the environment by studying all of 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 essential 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 past human activities have 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? Not all people have experienced their environmental circumstances in the same ways—far from it—so attending to questions of human difference will be an important part of what we study as well. 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 United States, so that the course is also a history of conservation and environmentalism in our nation’s political life down to the present.
“American Environmental History” offers students not just a survey of the history, geography, and changing environments of the United States from colonial times to the present, but also different ways of seeing these subjects, so that the national (and natural) history and geography of the country come alive in new ways. By the end of the course, students will have learned to:
This syllabus provides a detailed outline of what we'll be covering in the course, and we strongly advise you to refer to it (and our Canvas pages) often as you plan your studying. Readings are moderately extensive, but they are generally not difficult; they have been chosen as much as possible to be fun and thought-provoking as well as informative. In recognition of the special challenges posed by this COVID-shadowed semester, most of the assigned texts can be read online via the UW-Madison library, though you may wish to purchase some of them to consult in hard copy or on your own ebook device. Required texts should be available at the University Bookstore, and can also be ordered from your preferred online bookseller, though we’d urge you to do this as soon as possible to make sure you’ll have access when you need it. Our assigned books are as follows (with call numbers):
William Cronon, Changes in the Land, GF 504 N45 C76 2003 (any edition OK)
Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac, QH81 L56 1966 (any edition OK)
David Stradling, Conservation in the Progressive Era: Classic Texts, QH76 C6545 2004
Donald Worster, Dust Bowl, F786 W87 (any edition OK)
Christopher W. Wells, Environmental Justice in Postwar America: A Documentary Reader, GE230 .E594 2018
In addition to these books, a number of other readings are available as electronic reserves via Canvas. Please be sure you know how to access Canvas, our e-reserve readings, and the material linked from our course web page on my website by the end of the first week of classes.
This 4-credit class meets each week for a total of 4 class period hours over the fall semester: two 75-minute lectures plus one 50-minute discussion section, which together count as four contact hours according to UW-Madison’s credit hour policy. The course expects that students will work on course learning activities (reading, writing, research, studying, etc) for about 2 hours out of classroom for every class period, for an average of at least 8 hours of work outside of class per week. This syllabus includes detailed information about meeting times and expectations for student work.
There are two short papers required for this course, both of equal weight, submitted via Canvas.
This first written assignment should be submitted by no later than 5:00pm on Saturday, September 26. In it, you’ll be asked to use materials from lectures and the assigned readings to pick 2-3 objects, materials, tools, organisms, or practices to offer a carefully argued, well-supported interpretation of what you see as some of the most important differences between the ways colonists and native peoples understood and interacted with the environments of the eastern seaboard of North America during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. (If you’d like, you can include in your discussion an analysis of how these things changed over this period.) Try to make all of your arguments and examples work together to sustain a coherent argument, strive to balance abstract arguments with concrete evidence, and write as well as you can to give us a sense of your best prose.
Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac has long been regarded as one of the great classics of American conservation and nature writing, profoundly influencing American environmental politics and ideas of nature since its publication in 1949. In light of the readings and discussions we’ve done in 460, how would you assess the continuing relevance of this book and of Leopold’s thought more generally? In what ways might we now be critical of the book in ways that might not have occurred to many of Leopold’s contemporaries? Remembering that the book is a historical document very much reflecting the period from the 1920s through the 1940s when these essays were written, why do you think it had such a large impact in the quarter century immediately after it was published, and why do you think some of its arguments may not resonate as well today as they did in the 1950s and 1960s?
In working to hone your writing skills, the following links point to a number of very helpful guides and handouts that you may find especially useful: https://history.wisc.edu/undergraduate-program/the-history-lab/history-lab-writing-guides/
https://poorvucenter.yale.edu/undergraduates/writing-handouts-and-model-papers/writing-handouts
UW-Madison Writing Center: http://writing.wisc.edu/Handbook/QuotingSources.html
Yale Writing Center: https://poorvucenter.yale.edu/writing/using-sources/understanding-and-avoiding-plagiarism
If you are a McBurney student who needs any special accommodations for the course, please make sure that both I and your section leader are aware of your situation as early in the semester as possible, and well in advance of any examinations for which accommodations will be required.
Here are some tips about how to approach the writing your two short papers, and also about how we'll be grading it. I've adopted these from the excellent writing standards that a former colleague used, and she in turn adapted them from rubrics like this that have circulated widely on the Web. Although I'm not at all sure of the original author, two important earlier versions of the text below include Paul Halsall's "General Evaluation Rubric for College Papers" (https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/med/rubric.asp), which was based in turn on Patrick Rael's "General Grading Rubric" (https://courses.bowdoin.edu/writing-guides/editing-and-evaluation/generic-grading-rubric/). These may itself have been inspired by rubrics used in grading AP essays. This text has been slightly modified to fit this course, but is otherwise borrowed pretty completely from my colleague’s version of the rubric.
Please note that because our two papers in this course are based mainly on course materials, not original research, we don’t expect you to include lots of sources drawn from outside the course. Any sources you quote or rely on heavily should be cited in your notes, but again, you can use whatever citation system you’re most familiar with from the disciplines in which you work most frequently. Just be sure to include whatever information we need to be able to find the source of your quotations.
The Superior Paper (A: 94-100) Structure: Your thesis and narrative are clear, insightful, original, sophisticated, even exciting. Your story and your arguments are well integrated with each other. All ideas in the paper flow logically; your argument is identifiable, reasonable, and sound. You have excellent transitions. Your paragraphs have solid topic sentences, and each sentence clearly relates to that topic sentence. Your conclusion is persuasive.
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 (and significantly more as lateness increases) unless other arrangements are made well prior to the due date.
Brianna, Thomas, Zada and I recognize that this is an extraordinarily challenging and difficult time for all of us. We understand that, like the four of us, you’ll almost certainly be facing new challenges this fall while attending classes and doing assignments under the unusual circumstances that COVID-19 has imposed on all of us. We will do everything we can to be humane and flexible in helping you meet these challenges—as we hope you’ll also try to be generous with us as we struggle to adjust our ordinary teaching practices to this very challenging new learning environment.
We’re living through a world historical event that environmental historians and many others will be studying, analyzing, and writing about for decades to come. We hope you’ll regularly take time to ponder the many ways that themes from this course will be unfolding and exemplified all around us every day this fall.
Our health policies for 460 follow the general polices of UW-Madison. Our primary goals this fall will be 1) supporting the safety of students and staff; and 2) maximizing the effectiveness of teaching and learning as best we can. Given these goals and the very large size of our class, many components of 460, including all of the lectures, will be online during Fall 2020.
For in-person discussions, our key safety protocols are the following:
We’ll keep a close eye on the level of COVID prevalence on campus and locally, and will revise these safety protocols and class requirements based on our best judgment and on campus, county, and state guidelines.
Additional Resources:
University Health Services COVID-19 info: https://www.uhs.wisc.edu/medical/testing/
UW-Madison Smart Restart Plan: https://smartrestart.wisc.edu/plan/#health-and-safety
Dane County Public Health Orders: https://publichealthmdc.com/coronavirus/forward-dane/requirements
Wisconsin DHS: COVID Information: https://www.dhs.wisconsin.gov/covid-19/index.htm
CDC: Masks: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-sick/diy-cloth-face-coverings.html
CDC: What to do if you are feeling sick: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/if-you-are-sick/steps-when-sick.html
CDC: Home quarantine: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/if-you-are-sick/end-home-isolation.html
IMPORTANT: In the following outline, lecture topics are arranged into thematic "weeks" that do NOT correspond to ordinary calendar weeks, so don't be confused about this. Most "weeks" consist of a Wednesday lecture, the following Monday lecture, and the following Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, or Saturday sections; 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, one of these thematic "weeks" may involve a number of lectures less than or more than two. Please note: to help you plan your weekly workload, the parenthetic number after each week's title is the approximate number of pages of reading assigned for that week.
Unless otherwise noted, readings below can be found linked from the online Canvas website for our course.
9/2: Ghost Landscapes: Getting Started with Environmental History (Kennecott Journey)
9/7: NO CLASS (Labor Day)
SECTIONS: 8-12 Sept: Introductory: Getting to Know Each Other in the Shadow of COVID-19
READINGS: If you'd like, you can reread Bill's opening lecture, the original version of which is a published essay: William Cronon, "Kennecott Journey: The Paths Out of Town," in William Cronon, George Miles, and Jay Gitlin, eds., Under an Open Sky: Rethinking America's Western Past (1992), 28-51, also available on Bill's website as a link under "Other Resources" on our course webpage. It's probably best to do this after the lecture.
9/9: The World That Coyote and Raven Made
9/14: Migration, Disease, and Death
SECTIONS, 15-19 Sept:
READINGS: Cronon, Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England (1983), xi-81; (for ebook readers, this is the Foreword, Preface, and Chapters 1-4)
Susan Hill, The Clay We Are Made Of: Haudenosaunee Land Tenure on the Grand River (Part I: "Haudenosaunee Cultural History and Relationship to Land"), 15-76.
Alfred W. Crosby, "Virgin Soil Epidemics as a Factor in the Aboriginal Depopulation in America," William and Mary Quarterly, Third Series (April 1976), 289-99.
9/16: Co-Invasion: Some Larger Creatures
9/21: Selling Animals
SECTIONS, 22-26 Sept:
READINGS: Cronon, Changes in the Land, 82-185 (for ebook readers, this is Chapters 5-8 and the Afterword; if your version of the book is missing the Afterword, you’ll find a link for downloading it in Canvas)
Francis Higginson, "A Catalogue of Such Needful Things as Every Planter Doth or Ought to Provide to Go to New England," in New England's Plantation (London, 1630), as reprinted in John Demos, Remarkable Providences (1972), 42-43.
9/23: A World of Fields and Fences
9/28: Mountain Gloom, Mountain Glory: Sublime and Picturesque
SECTIONS, 29 Sept - 3 Oct:
READINGS: Romanticism readings and romantic landscape paintings (two brief PDF collections of romantic writings and paintings)
FIRST WRITTEN ASSIGNMENT (due by 5:00pm on Saturday, 9/26)
9/30: The Flow of the River: Urban-Industrial Revolutions
10/5: The Machine in the Garden
SECTIONS, 6-10 Oct: Preparation for mid-term exam.
READINGS: (nothing new; review earlier assignments)
10/7: Hunters and Hunted (this lecture counts as part of second half of course)
10/12: MID-TERM EXAM (online take-home exam)
SECTIONS, 13-17 Oct: NO SECTION this week because of midterm exam
READINGS: (begin readings for next week)
10/14: Even the Oceans Fail
10/19: The Conservation Vision
SECTIONS, 20-24 Oct: Return first paper
READINGS: David Stradling, Conservation in the Progressive Era: Classic Texts, vii-106. (read entire book)
Please also read this recent Sierra Club Statement about John Muir, July 2020:
https://www.sierraclub.org/michael-brune/2020/07/john-muir-early-history-sierra-club
along with the following short online texts:
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-miseducation-of-john-muir
https://www.uuworld.org/articles/problem-wilderness
https://theamericanscholar.org/taking-down-teddy/
10/21: Planning Against Disaster
10/26: Strategic Resources and the Population Bomb
SECTIONS, 27-31 Oct:
READINGS: Donald Worster, Dust Bowl (1979), 3-97, 182-254 (for ebook readers, this is Parts 1, 2, and 5 of the book, or Chapters 1-5, 12-14, and the Epilogue)
Charles Wohlforth, Conservation and Eugenics, Orion, 6/24/2010, https://orionmagazine.org/article/conservation-and-eugenics/
10/28: Public Parks and Pleasuring Grounds
11/2: Wilderness and the Land Ethic
SECTIONS, 3-7 Nov:
READINGS: Leopold, A Sand County Almanac, 6-19, 127-9, 137-41, 237-95. (If you're using another edition, read essays entitled "Good Oak," "Red Legs Kicking," "Thinking Like a Mountain," and Part IV, "The Upshot");
Lauret Savoy, "Alien Land Ethic: The Distance Between," Trace: Memory, History, Race, and the American Landscape (2015), 31-48;
Miles A. Powell, “'Pestered with Inhabitants' - Aldo Leopold, William Vogt, and More Trouble with Wilderness," Pacific Historical Review (May 2015), 195-226
Evelyn C. White, “Black Women and the Wilderness,” in Becky Thompson & Sangeeta Tyagi, Names We Call Home: Autobiography on Racial Identity (1996), 283-86.
William Cronon, "The Trouble with Wilderness," in Cronon, Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature (1995), 69-90, available online at https://www.williamcronon.net/writing/Trouble_with_Wilderness_Main.html
11/4: The Fallout of Silent Spring
11/9: Documentary films about Rachel Carson and Silent Spring
SECTIONS, 10-14 Nov:
READINGS: Rachel Carson, "A Fable for Tomorrow," Silent Spring (1962), 1-3.
11/11: Environmentalism Triumphant?
11/16: Toxic Torts and Environmental Justice
SECTIONS, 17-21 Nov:
READINGS: Christopher W. Wells, Environmental Justice in Postwar America: A Documentary Reader (2018), Read the Introduction (pp 3-22) and Part II (89-210) closely; skim Parts I and III, giving them as much time as you can spare at this busy time of year. Your discussion leader may give you additional guidance about texts we’ll be emphasizing in class.
Isaac Chotiner, "How Racism Is Shaping the Coronavirus Epidemic," (Interview with Evelynn Hammond), New Yorker, 5/7/2020
SECOND WRITTEN ASSIGNMENT (due by start of lecture, 11/16):
11/18: The Changing Landscapes of Native Wisconsin (guest lecture by Thomas Kivi)
11/23: Regulation to the Rescue
SECTIONS: NO SECTION BECAUSE OF THANKSGIVING
READINGS: none, but you might wish to start perusing next week’s materials on Hurricane Katrina and Kate Brown’s essay on COVID-19 if you have time.
11/25: Energy Crises
11/26: Thanksgiving
11/30: Climate Change & Hurricane Katrina
SECTIONS, 1-5 December: FINAL SECTION, Review for Final Exam, Reflect on semester
READINGS: Kate Brown, "The Pandemic Is Not a Natural Disaster," New Yorker, 4/13/2020
Ed Yong, “How the Pandemic Defeated America,” Atlantic, Sept 2020, 32-47
Please spend a couple hours exploring the collection of online materials about Hurricane Katrina.
12/2: Backlashes
12/7: That Which We Tame
12/9: FINAL EXAM (online take-home essay exam on last day of class, covering only the second half of course)