HISTORY 5326 — SPRING 2023
Dr. Mark Stoll
HH 135 mark.stoll@ttu.edu https://www.markstoll.net
Office hours: Tuesday 11:00–12:00, Thursday 8:30–9:20 a.m., and by
appointment
Environmental history is one of the more recent fields in history and since the 1970s has been the fastest growing historical field in the world. This course is a graduate level introduction to significant scholarship in American environmental history, from the pre-colonial era to the present. We will meet for weekly discussions, focusing on historical interpretations, themes, and conceptualizations, with special attention to sources, argumentation, and methods employed in research and exposition. By the end of the semester you will have a solid foundation in the field.
I have carefully selected readings to cover a significant recent theme in recent American environmental historiography. Everyone will read all assigned works with care and critical attention, coming to class ready to engage in active discussion. In reading, seek out the book’s key thesis (and be able to summarize it in a few sentences). Also, you should be alert to its structure and rhetoric, note the claims made for advances over previous studies (relationship to the literature), and sketch out the conceptual or theoretical apparatus employed (identifying keywords and the ways they are employed). Finally, you should assess the work’s evidentiary base, the scope and scale of the study within the context of the issues and events it addresses, and its relationship with other aspects of American history. Analysis of the book in this way prepares you for critical discussion and clear writing. Ideally you should each come to class with several questions written out for us to address as a group; I will have a sizable list of such questions as well, so we should have ample resources to work from.
Book reviews can aid the reading process. Look for them especially in such major journals as the Journal of American History, American Historical Review, Reviews in American History, and H-Net (Humanities Online), along with such specialized journals as Environmental History and Environment and History. You can access on-line and hardcopy indexes to journal articles at the library, and many of these journals are available through the Internet or the library Website, particularly through the databases JSTOR, America: History and Life and EBSCO.
The structure of the course centers on a core book each week, fourteen monographs in all. Each week we will spend the first two-thirds of our time (roughly 6:00-7:50) critically assessing the core study. Following a 10-minute break, one student will present a summary and critique of a second, supplementary work (20-25 minutes). Then we will close with comparative comments and thoughts on research initiatives this discussion has opened up.
We start on January 17 with introductions to each other and to the course. Then on January 24 we will begin with the first book, by David Silkenat. You will sign up for a second book on the first day of class.
To promote discussions of substance, each student will write notes over the week’s reading (not required of the second book, however). These notes should cover important contents and points each week’s book makes, as well as many of the points mentioned above in connection with reading strategies. Aim to make them a good resource for future reference for such purposes as papers or comprehensive exams.
Very importantly, add comments of your own as they occur to you during the reading. Set them off in some obvious manner (e.g., with an asterisk or in a different font, or in some other way). These comments can be of any sort of thing that occurs to you, such as comments, connections to other things you’ve read in this or other classes, disagreements with the author, or other thoughts that the text may inspire. Students will hand in a copy of their notes each week. Your notes are not a polished paper; rather, they demonstrate to me your understanding of and interaction with the text. Also, the notes do not need to be extensive or many pages long to do the job.
Grading
of the notes will be on the following basis:
A: Good, complete, useful notes, with comments
B: Good notes, but unsatisfactory or missing comments
C: Poor or incomplete notes
Students will write two analytical papers about books read together and presented to class. The papers will discuss selected books and bring out their themes, evidence, strengths, weaknesses, and so forth, and analyze ways they complement, conflict with, or advance over each other. The papers are due in class after Spring Break and in my office by 5:00 p.m. on the last day of finals.
Use 12-point Times Roman or Times New Roman, double-spaced, with 1" margins all around, with page numbers in the margin. Do not add extra space between paragraphs. If your word-processing program does that automatically, adjust the Paragraph settings. Footnotes and bibliography are not required, but if used, must conform to Turabian standards. Turabian’s Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations is widely available at most bookstores and in the reference section of libraries.
Graduate-level writing should have no major problems in grammar and punctuation. If you suspect your paper is weak in those areas, I strongly encourage you to ask for help from the University Writing Center, which can advise you either online or in person.
Students will select one book on the first day of class to present to the class. A presentation should inform the rest of the class about the book’s contents, author, and significance. I recommend reading such books as a biography, book reviews (if available), historiographies, and similar works to gauge the full importance of a work. The purpose of these presentations is to acquaint the class well enough with works of foundational literature that they could discuss them intelligently in a paper. I highly recommend that students practice their presentations before class, to make sure that the presentation is strong and fits within the time allotted. The class would be expected to take notes over the presentations.
Grading of presentations will be on the basis of the cogency and clarity of the presentation as well as coverage of the main points mentioned above. Presentations that run longer than 25 minutes will be docked a letter grade.
Each student will write one paper over the book he or she chose to present in class. The paper will discuss the book’s main argument or purpose, its historical context, its author and his or her significance, and the its reception, impact, and place in the literature of religion and American history. Students should consult contemporary and modern reviews, a biography and other relevant secondary sources, articles, and other secondary literature to construct this paper of 8–10 pages in length. Databases that could be helpful include JSTOR, America: History and Life, Biography Index, Dictionary of Literary Biography, C19, Making of America, Historic New York Times and other historic newspaper databases, and, for earlier works, Eighteenth Century Collections Online and Early English Books Online. The primary goal is the fullest possible expansion of the work’s significance.
Use 12-point Times Roman or Times New Roman, double-spaced, with 1" margins all around, or 1-1/4" margins right and left, with page numbers in the margin, and no extra space between paragraphs. Use a cover page. Footnotes and bibliography must conform to Turabian standards. Turabian’s Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations is widely available at most bookstores and in the reference section of libraries.
The book paper will be due in class THREE WEEKS AFTER YOUR PRESENTATION.
Grades for this course will be based 45% on your papers, 25% on your notes, 10% on your presentation, and 20% on the quality of your contributions to class discussion.
Silkenat, David. Scars on the Land: An Environmental History of Slavery in the American South. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022.
Drake, Brian Allen, ed. The Blue, the Gray, and the Green: Toward an Environmental History of the Civil War. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2015.
Horowitz, Andy. Katrina: A History, 1915–2015. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2020.
Fisher, Colin. Urban Green: Nature, Recreation, and the Working Class in Industrial Chicago. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015.
Robichaud, Andrew A. Animal City: The Domestication of America. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2019.
Judd, Richard William. Finding Thoreau: The Meaning of Nature in the Making of an Environmental Icon. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2018.
Mitchell, Kerry. Spirituality and the State: Managing Nature and Experience in America’s National Parks. New York: New York University Press, 2017.
Brown, Kate. Plutopia: Nuclear Families, Atomic Cities, and the Great Soviet and American Plutonium Disasters. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.
Jacobs, Meg. Panic at the Pump: The Energy Crisis and the Transformation of American Politics in the 1970s. New York: Hill and Wang, 2016.
Specht, Joshua. Red Meat Republic: A Hoof-To-Table History of How Beef Changed America. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019.
Case, Andrew N. The Organic Profit: Rodale and the Making of Marketplace Environmentalism. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2018.
Elmore, Bartow J. Seed Money: Monsanto’s Past and Our Food Future. New York: Norton, 2021.
Hall, Clarence Jefferson. A Prison in the Woods: Environment and Incarceration in New York’s North Country. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2020.
Chiang, Connie Y. Nature Behind Barbed Wire: An Environmental History of the Japanese American Incarceration. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018.
Cotton Mather, The Christian Philosopher
William Bartram, Travels
Susan Fenimore Cooper, Rural Hours
Henry David Thoreau, Walden, or The Maine Woods
George Perkins Marsh, Man and Nature
John Burroughs, Signs and Seasons
John Muir, My First Summer in the Sierra, or The
Yosemite, or Travels in Alaska
Marjorie Stoneman Douglas, River of Grass
Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac
Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities
Rachel Carson, Silent Spring
Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire
Paul Ehrlich, Population Bomb
Ernest Callenbach, Ecotopia
Wendell Berry, The Unsettling of America: Culture and
Agriculture
Bill McKibben, The End of Nature
Michael Pollan, The Omnivore’s Dilemma
Elizabeth Kolbert, The
Sixth Extinction
The professor reserves the right to change this syllabus at his discretion. Changes will be announced in class and posted on this Website.
Course Schedule
Jan 17 |
Introduction |
Jan 24 |
Snow: no class |
Jan 31 |
Silkenat, Scars on the Land, and Drake, The Blue, the Gray, and the Green |
Feb 7 |
Horowitz, Katrina |
Feb 14 |
Fisher, Urban Green |
Feb 21 |
No class |
Feb 28 |
Robichaud, Animal City |
Mar 7 |
Specht, Red Meat Republic; presentation: Rudy, Pollan |
Mar 14 |
SPRING BREAK |
Mar 21 |
Case, The Organic Profit; presentation: Adam, Bartram |
Mar 28 |
Elmore, Seed Money |
Apr 4 |
Brown, Plutopia; Jacobs, Panic at the Pump |
Apr 11 |
Judd, Finding Thoreau |
Apr 18 |
Mitchell, Spirituality and the State |
Apr 25 |
Hall, A Prison in the Woods |
May 2 |
Chiang, Nature Behind Barbed Wire |
May 9 |
Paper 2 due |