History 3327 Ï Spring 2023

Earth, Wind, & Fire: Nature & History in America

Professor Mark Stoll

Holden Hall 135

E-mail: mark.stoll@ttu.edu Web: https://www.markstoll.net/

Office Hours: Tuesday 11:00 a.m.–12:00 noon, Thursday 8:30–9:30 a.m., and by appointment

DESCRIPTION OF COURSE

Through lectures, readings, and film, the course explores two evolving topics in American history: the interrelationship and mutual impact of humans with the land and its plant and animal life; and cultural attitudes and thinking about nature and the environment.

TEXTS

William Cronon, Changes in the Land	Rachel Carson, Silent Spring
John Muir, My First Summer in the Sierra	Oreskes and Conway. Merchants of Doubt
John Clayton, Natural Rivals	Lauret Savoy, Trace

ASSIGNMENTS

17.5% each	Midterm examinations
25%	Final examination
30%	Six book quizzes
10%	Analytical book review

Exams: Exams will be essay exams. Students will have an opportunity to demonstrate their knowledge of environmental history as well as to engage issues raised in lectures, discussions, and readings. The final exam will have the same format as midterms, with the addition of a cumulative section.

Book quizzes: Short quizzes given on the discussion day for each book will encourage students to have read the books and be ready to discuss them.

Makeups: Student may make up missed quizzes or exams on the last Tuesday of classes, May 2, only.

Papers: Students will write an analytical book review on a book of their choice.
Instructions for the analytical book review: For this review, students will select a book on environmental history from the bibliography of American environmental history on the professor’s Website (excluding edited collections of essays or books required for the course). There is a full bibliography here: http://www.markstoll.net/Bibliographies/US/Environmental. htm. Students may select another book if the professor approves it. The book review will be four to six pages long and have three sections:

1. A short summary (not a table of contents or outline) of the book’s contents; this should not take more than a paragraph or two.

2. An explanation of the book’s thesis, with a discussion of how the author has supported the thesis. You can often find a statement of the book’s thesis in its preface, introduction, or conclusion. Reread these sections after you finish your book. (Ask the professor, if you have any doubts. Many students miss or confuse the thesis!)

3. Most important, an analysis of the book, including how successful it is (or is not!) in supporting its thesis, what the author’s bias (that is, its point of view) is, whether it agrees or disagrees with other class material, how it might be improved, how well it is written, and whether you agree with the book’s conclusions. Would you recommend it to others? Give examples to support each point of your analysis.

Papers will be printed in 12-point Times New Roman, double spaced, with 1" margins all around. Do not add space between paragraphs (and if your word-processing program does so automatically, adjust the “Paragraph” settings). If you quote directly from the text of your book, cite your source by adding the page number or numbers in parentheses immediately after the quotation. For example:

The poet wrote, “That is the way the world ends” (42).

No footnotes or bibliography are necessary. Grammar and punctuation must be correct. For writing advice, see https://www.depts.ttu.edu/provost/uwc/undergraduate/academicwriting.php. Also, the University Writing Center (paid for by your fees!) would be happy to help you polish your writing. They can help you in person or via the Internet, and can be reached through their Website: https://www.depts.ttu.edu/provost/uwc/.

Attendance: The professor will call roll at the beginning of each class. Students with a perfect attendance record will receive three bonus points on their final grades. Students with more than two absences will receive 1½ points off their final grades for each absence over two. The instructor will accept excuses in cases of true need if appropriately documented.

Plagiarism: Using text written by someone else (even in a close paraphrase) is academic dishonesty. It is strictly against university and departmental policy. Papers that have been plagiarized in whole or in part receive a 0 for the assignment, and a further penalty of 10 points will be deducted from the student’s final grade average.

Electronics in the Classroom: Because electronic devices distract both the student and other students around them, all electronic devices must be turned off during class time. This means no texting or other use of cell phones, and no laptops. Students using cell phones in class will be asked to leave and will be counted absent for the day. Laptops may be used only if the instructor gives permission, but students must use the computer for class-related activities only, such as note-taking. This means no e-mail, social media, Internet surfing, video watching, or other non-academic activities. If, during an exam, a student is seen using any electronic device, the exam will be collected immediately at that moment and receive a failing grade.

The professor reserves the right to change this syllabus at his discretion. Changes will be announced in class and posted on this Website.

SPRING 2023 COURSE SCHEDULE

Date	Assignment
Jan 12	Introduction Elmore, Bartow J. Citizen Coke: The Making of Coca-Cola Capitalism. Hanson, Elizabeth. Animal Attractions: Nature on Display in American Zoos. Mitman, Gregg. Reel Nature: America's Romance with Wildlife on Film. Steinberg, Ted. Acts of God: The Unnatural History of Natural Disaster in America. Stoll, Mark R. Inherit the Holy Mountain: Religion and the Rise of American Environmentalism.
Jan 17	Were Indians environmentalists? Krech, Shepard. The Ecological Indian: Myth and History. Mann, Charles C. 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus. Spence, Mark David. Dispossessing the Wilderness; Indian Removal and the Making of the National Parks. West, Elliott. The Contested Plains: Indians, Goldseekers, & the Rush to Colorado. White, Richard. The Roots of Dependency: Subsistence, Environment, and Social Change among the Choctaws, Pawnees, and Navajos.
Jan 19	Arrival of the Europeans: ecological imperialism Crosby, Alfred W. Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe. Diamond, Jared M. Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. Parsons, Christopher M. A Not-So-New World: Empire and Environment in French Colonial North America.
Jan 24	Snow: no class
Jan 26	Reading: Cronon, Changes in the Land Slavery and the Southern environment Anderson, Virginia DeJohn. Creatures of Empire: How Domestic Animals Transformed Early America Anderson, Jennifer L. Mahogany: The Costs of Luxury in Early America. Donahue, Brian. The Great Meadow: Farmers and the Land in Colonial Concord. White, Sam. A Cold Welcome: The Little Ice Age and Europe's Encounter with North America. Wickman, Thomas M. Snowshoe Country: An Environmental and Cultural History of Winter in the Early American Northeast.
Jan 31	Colonization, agriculture, and the American South Brady, Lisa M. War Upon the Land: Military Strategy and the Transformation of Southern Landscapes During the American Civil War. Earley, Lawrence S. Looking for Longleaf: The Fall and Rise of an American Forest. Giltner, Scott E. Hunting and Fishing in the New South: Black Labor and White Leisure After the Civil War. Horowitz, Andy. Katrina: A History, 1915–2015. Kirby, Jack Temple. Mockingbird Song: Ecological Landscapes of the South. Mauldin, Erin Stewart. Unredeemed Land: An Environmental History of Civil War and Emancipation in the Cotton South. Maysilles, Duncan. Ducktown Smoke: The Fight Over One of the South's Greatest Environmental Disasters. Morris, Christopher. The Big Muddy: An Environmental History of the Mississippi and Its Peoples from Hernando de Soto to Hurricane Katrina. McNeill, John Robert. Mosquito Empires: Ecology and War in the Greater Caribbean, 1620-1914. Silkenat, David. Scars on the Land: An Environmental History of Slavery in the American South. Stewart, Mart A. “What Nature Suffers to Groe”: Life, Labor, and Landscape on the Georgia Coast, 1680–1920.
Feb 2	American Romanticism Judd, Richard William. The Untilled Garden: Natural History and the Spirit of Conservation in America, 1740–1840. Marx, Leo. The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America. Schmitt, Peter J. Back to Nature: The Arcadian Myth in Urban America. Stoll, Mark R. Inherit the Holy Mountain: Religion and the Rise of American Environmentalism. Walls, Laura Dassow. The Passage to Cosmos: Alexander Von Humboldt and the Shaping of America. Wulf, Andrea. Founding Gardeners: The Revolutionary Generation, Nature, and the Shaping of the American Nation.
Feb 7	Reading: Muir, My First Summer in the Sierra Dean, Adam Wesley. An Agrarian Republic: Farming, Antislavery Politics, and Nature Parks in the Civil War Era. Smith, Michael L. Pacific Visions: California Scientists and the Environment, 1850–1915.
Feb 9	Transformation of the West: The Spanish, Russians, and miners Brown, Jen Corrinne. Trout Culture: How Fly Fishing Forever Changed the Rocky Mountain West. Cronon, William. Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West. DeBuys, William. Enchantment and Exploitation: The Life and Hard Times of a New Mexico Mountain Range. Demuth, Bathsheba. Floating Coast: An Environmental History of the Arctic. Farmer, Jared. Trees in Paradise: A California History. Flores, Dan. Caprock Canyonlands: Journeys into the Heart of the Southern Plains. Francaviglia, Richard V. The Cast Iron Forest: A Natural and Cultural History of the North American Cross Timbers. Igler, David. Industrial Cowboys: Miller & Lux and the Transformation of the Far West, 1850–1920. Isenberg, Andrew C. Mining California: An Ecological History. LeCain, Timothy J. Mass Destruction: The Men and Giant Mines That Wired America and Scarred the Planet. Leech, Brian James. The City That Ate Itself: Butte, Montana and Its Expanding Berkeley Pit. Lockwood, Jeffrey Alan. Locust: The Devastating Rise and Mysterious Disappearance of the Insect That Shaped the American Frontier. Morse, Kathryn. The Nature of Gold: An Environmental History of the Klondike Gold Rush.
Feb 14	First Midterm Exam
Feb 16	Transformation of the West: Settlement of the Plains Archer, Kenna Lang. Unruly Waters: A Social and Environmental History of the Brazos River. Fitzgerald, Deborah. Every Farm a Factory: The Industrial Ideal in American Agriculture. Isenberg, Andrew C. The Destruction of the Bison: An Environmental History, 1750–1920. Opie, John, Char Miller, and Kenna Lang Archer. Ogallala: Water for a Dry Land. 3rd ed. Smith-Howard, Kendra. Pure and Modern Milk: An Environmental History Since 1900. Specht, Joshua. Red Meat Republic: A Hoof-To-Table History of How Beef Changed America. Stoll, Steven. Larding the Lean Earth: Soil and Society in Nineteenth-Century America. Tsu, Cecilia M. Garden of the World: Asian Immigrants and the Making of Agriculture in California’s Santa Clara Valley. Worster, Donald. Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s.
Feb 21	No class
Feb 23	No class
Feb 28	Conservation and Parks and Progressive conservation Armitage, Kevin C. The Nature Study Movement: The Forgotten Popularizer of America's Conservation Ethic. Cumbler, John T. Reasonable Use: The People, the Environment, and the State, New England, 1790–1930. Davis, Janet M. The Gospel of Kindness: Animal Welfare and the Making of Modern America. Farmer, Jared. Trees in Paradise: A California History. Fiege, Mark. Irrigated Eden: The Making of an Agricultural Landscape in the American West. Freinkel, Susan. American Chestnut: The Life, Death, and Rebirth of a Perfect Tree. Hays, Samuel P. Conservation and the Gospel of Efficiency: The Progressive Conservation Movement, 1890–1920. Jacoby, Karl. Crimes Against Nature: Squatters, Poachers, Thieves, and the Hidden History of American Conservation. Jones, Holway R. John Muir and the Sierra Club: The Battle for Yosemite. Judd, Richard William. The Untilled Garden: Natural History and the Spirit of Conservation in America, 1740–1840. Kohlstedt, Sally Gregory. Teaching Children Science: Hands-on Nature Study in North America, 1890–1930. Paris, Leslie. Children’s Nature: The Rise of the American Summer Camp. Purchase, Eric. Out of Nowhere: Disaster and Tourism in the White Mountains. Pyne, Stephen J. Year of the Fires: The Story of the Great Fires of 1910. Reiger, John F. American Sportsmen and the Origins of Conservation. 3rd ed., rev. & expanded. Righter, Robert W. The Battle over Hetch Hetchy: America's Most Controversial Dam and the Birth of Modern Environmentalism.
Mar 2	Reading: Clayton, Natural Rivals
Mar 7	Urban environmental problems Fisher, Colin. Urban Green: Nature, Recreation, and the Working Class in Industrial Chicago. Greene, Ann Norton. Horses at Work: Harnessing Power in Industrial America. McShane, Clay, and Joel A. Tarr. The Horse in the City: Living Machines in the Nineteenth Century. Robichaud, Andrew A. Animal City: The Domestication of America. Stradling, David. Smokestacks and Progressives: Environmentalists, Engineers and Air Quality in America, 1881–1951. Steinberg, Theodore. Nature Incorporated: Industrialization and the Waters of New England. Fisher, Colin. Urban Green: Nature, Recreation, and the Working Class in Industrial Chicago. Hurley, Andrew. Environmental Inequalities: Class, Race, and Industrial Pollution in Gary, Indiana, 1945–1980. McNeur, Catherine. Taming Manhattan: Environmental Battles in the Antebellum City. Melosi, Martin V. Precious Commodity: Providing Water for America's Cities. Melosi, Martin V. Effluent America: Cities, Industry, Energy, and the Environment. Melosi, Martin V. The Sanitary City: Urban Infrastructure in America from Colonial Times to the Present. Melosi, Martin V. Fresh Kills: A History of Consuming and Discarding in New York City. Soll, David. Empire of Water: An Environmental and Political History of the New York City Water Supply.
Mar 9	The 1920s and the New Deal Biel, Alice Wondrak. Do (Not) Feed the Bears: The Fitful History of Wildlife and Tourists in Yellowstone. Clements, Kendrick A. Hoover, Conservation, and Consumerism: Engineering the Good Life. Loomis, Erik. Empire of Timber: Labor Unions and the Pacific Northwest Forests. Chiang, Connie Y. Nature Behind Barbed Wire: An Environmental History of the Japanese American Incarceration. Maher, Neil M. Nature's New Deal: The Civilian Conservation Corps and the Roots of the American Environmental Movement. Phillips, Sarah T. This Land, This Nation: Conservation, Rural America, and the New Deal. Sutter, Paul S. Driven Wild: How the Fight against Automobiles Launched the Modern Wilderness Movement.
Mar 11–19	Spring Break
Mar 21	Postwar environment: Environmental thinking, prosperity, pollution Book review due Brown, Kate. Plutopia: Nuclear Families, Atomic Cities, and the Great Soviet and American Plutonium Disasters. Jacob, Gerald. Site Unseen: The Politics of Siting a Nuclear Waste Repository. Kaufman, Scott. Project Plowshare: The Peaceful Use of Nuclear Explosives in Cold War America.
Mar 23	1950s: Air pollution, radiation, nature recreation, dams Harvey, Mark W.T. A Symbol of Wilderness: Echo Park and the American Conservation Movement. Pearson, Byron E. Still the Wild River Runs: Congress, the Sierra Club, and the Fight to Save Grand Canyon. Reisner, Marc. Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water.
Mar 28	Reading: Carson, Silent Spring
Mar 30	1960s environmental problems: Consumption, oil, suburban sprawl
Apr 4	Second Midterm Exam
Apr 6	The 1960s: Johnson and the Great Society and environmental crisis Biggs, David. Footprints of War: Militarized Landscapes in Vietnam. Gutfreund, Owen D. Twentieth-Century Sprawl: Highways and the Reshaping of the American Landscape. Montrie, Chad. To Save the Land and People: A History of Opposition to Surface Coal Mining in Appalachia. Rome, Adam. The Bulldozer in the Countryside: Suburban Sprawl and the Rise of American Environmentalism. Russell, Edmund. War and Nature: Fighting Humans and Insects with Chemicals from World War I to Silent Spring. Shepherd, Jeffrey P. Guadalupe Mountains National Park: An Environmental History of the Southwest Borderlands. Wells, Christopher W. Car Country: An Environmental History.
Apr 11	The 1970s: Nixon and the environmental decade Coates, Peter. American Perceptions of Immigrant and Invasive Species: Strangers on the Land. Coodley, Gregg, and David Sarasohn. The Green Years, 1964–1976: When Democrats and Republicans United to Repair the Earth. Drake, Brian Allen. Loving Nature, Fearing the State: Environmentalism and Antigovernment Politics Before Reagan. Dunaway, Finis. Natural Visions The Power of Images in American Environmental Reform. Flippen, J. Brooks. Nixon and the Environment. Longhurst, James Lewis. Bike Battles: A History of Sharing the American Road. Mitman, Gregg. Reel Nature: America's Romance with Wildlife on Film. Rome, Adam. The Genius of Earth Day: How a 1970 Teach-in Unexpectedly Made the First Green Generation. Speece, Darren Frederick. Defending Giants: The Redwood Wars and the Transformation of American Environmental Politics. Stradling, David, and Richard Stradling. Where the River Burned: Carl Stokes and the Struggle to Save Cleveland. Unger, Nancy C. Beyond Nature's Housekeepers: American Women in Environmental History. Zelko, Frank S. Make It a Green Peace! The Rise of Countercultural Environmentalism.
Apr 13	The 1970s: Carter and the Energy Crisis, Toxic Waste, and Nuclear Power Blum, Elizabeth D. Love Canal Revisited : Race, Class, and Gender in Environmental Activism. Davis, Frederick Rowe. Banned: A History of Pesticides and the Science of Toxicology. Elmore, Bartow J. Seed Money: Monsanto's Past and Our Food Future. Jacobs, Meg. Panic at the Pump: The Energy Crisis and the Transformation of American Politics in the 1970s. Langston, Nancy. Toxic Bodies: Hormone Disruptors and the Legacy of DES. Newman, Richard S. Love Canal: A Toxic History from Colonial Times to the Present. Smith, Kimberly K. African American Environmental Thought. Walker, J. Samuel. Three Mile Island: A Nuclear Crisis in Historical Perspective.
Apr 18	Reading: Oreskes and Conway. Merchants of Doubt Davis, Devra Lee. When Smoke Ran Like Water: Tales of Environmental Deception and the Battle Against Pollution. Howe, Joshua P. Behind the Curve: Science and the Politics of Global Warming. Markowitz, Gerald, and David Rosner. Deceit and Denial: The Deadly Politics of Industrial Pollution.
Apr 20	The 1980s: Reagan and the End of Bipartisan Environmentalism Ellingson, Stephen. To Care for Creation: The Emergence of the Religious Environmental Movement. McGurty, Eileen Maura. Transforming Environmentalism: Warren County, PCBs, and the Origins of Environmental Justice. Pogue, Neall W. The Nature of the Religious Right: The Struggle between Conservative Evangelicals and the Environmental Movement. Spears, Ellen Griffith. Baptized in PCBs: Race, Pollution, and Justice in an All-American Town. Turner, James Morton, and Andrew C. Isenberg. The Republican Reversal: Conservatives and the Environment from Nixon to Trump.
Apr 25	Environmental Justice; International Solutions to Acid Rain and Ozone Depletion, but Not Global Warming Busch, Andrew M. City in a Garden: Environmental Transformations and Racial Justice in Twentieth-Century Austin, Texas. Ellingson, Stephen. To Care for Creation: The Emergence of the Religious Environmental Movement. Harrison, Jill Lindsey. Pesticide Drift and the Pursuit of Environmental Justice. Horowitz, Andy. Katrina: A History, 1915–2015. Woodhouse, Keith Makoto. The Ecocentrists: A History of Radical Environmentalism.
Apr 27	A New Environmentalism for the Twentieth Century?
May 2	Reading: Savoy, Trace
May 5	Friday, 7:30 a.m. to 10:00 a.m.: FINAL EXAM