HISTORY 3327

Earth, Wind, and Fire
Nature and History in America

SPRING 2016

3327 Syllabus Spring 2016

Professor Mark Stoll

Holden Hall 135   E-mail: mark.stoll@ttu.edu   Web: http://www.markstoll.net
Office Hours: Tuesdays and Thursdays, 9:00–10:30, and by appointment

DESCRIPTION OF COURSE

Through lectures and readings, 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, politics, and thinking about nature and the environment.

TEXTS
Jack Temple Kirby, Mockingbird Song: Ecological Landscapes of the South
Richard Judd, Second Nature: An Environmental History of New England
Study questions
Donald Worster, Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s
Andrew Hurley, Environmental Inequalities: Class, Race, and Industrial Pollution in Gary, Indiana, 1945-1980

ASSIGNMENTS

19% ea.	Two midterm examinations
27%	Cumulative final examination
20%	Four book quizzes
15%	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. Missed exams can be made up on the makeup day only: Monday, May 9.

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. Missed quizzes can be made up on the makeup day only: Monday, May 9.

Papers: Students will write an analytical book review on a book of their choice, drawn from the professor's bibliography (excluding edited collections of essays or books required for the course).
Instructions for the analytical book review: For this review, students will select a book on religious history from the bibliography of American religious history on the professor's Website. 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 (or 1¼" right and left margins and 1" margins top and bottom). 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 links to online writing advice, see http://english.ttu.edu/uwc01/Resources/default.asp. 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: http://english.ttu.edu/uwc01/.

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.
Late papers: Late papers will be accepted but they will be docked 5 points for each business day late.

Attendance: The professor will call roll at the beginning of each class. Students with a perfect attendance record will receive 3 bonus points on their final grades. Students with more than two absences will receive 1.5 points off their final grades for each absence over two. The instructor will accept excuses in cases of true need if appropriately documented.

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.

Note: Any student who intends to observe a religious holy day should make that intention known to the instructor prior to the absence.  A student who is absent from class for the observance of a religious holy day shall be allowed to take an examination or complete an assignment scheduled for that day within a reasonable time after the absence.  See University Standard Operating Procedure 34.19.
Note: Any student who, because of a disability, may require special arrangements in order to meet the course requirements should contact the instructor as soon as possible to make any necessary arrangements. Students should present appropriate verification from Student Disability Services during the instructor�s office hours. Please note: instructors are not allowed to provide classroom accommodations to a student until appropriate verification from Student Disability Services has been provided. For additional information, please contact Student Disability Services in West Hall or call 806-742-2405.
The professor reserves the right to change this syllabus at his discretion. Changes will be announced in class and posted on the class Webpages.

HISTORY 3327: SPRING 2016 COURSE SCHEDULE

Date	Assignment
Jan 21	Introduction
Jan 26	Were Indians environmentalists? Cronon, William. Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England. New York: Hill and Wang, 1983. Krech, Shepard. The Ecological Indian: Myth and History. New York: W.W. Norton, 1999. Mann, Charles C. 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus. New York: Knopf, 2005. Spence, Mark David. Dispossessing the Wilderness; Indian Removal and the Making of the National Parks. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. White, Richard. The Roots of Dependency: Subsistence, Environment, and Social Change among the Choctaws, Pawnees, and Navajos. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983.
Jan 28	Arrival of the Europeans: ecological imperialism Crosby, Alfred W. The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1972. Crosby, Alfred W. Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986. Diamond, Jared. Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. New York: Norton, 1999.
Feb 2	Slavery and the Southern environment Cowdrey, Albert E. This Land, This South: An Environmental History. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1983. McNeill, John Robert. Mosquito Empires: Ecology and War in the Greater Caribbean, 1620-1914. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Silver, Timothy. A New Face on the Countryside: Indians, Colonists, and Slaves in the South Atlantic Forests, 1500-1800. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. Stewart, Mart A. "What Nature Suffers to Groe": life, labor, and landscape on the Georgia coast, 1680-1920. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1996.
Feb 4	Slavery and the Southern environment, cont.
Feb 9	Reading: Kirby, Mockingbird Song
Feb 11	Puritan New England Cronon, William. Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England. New York: Hill and Wang, 1983. Donahue, Brian. The Great Meadow: Farmers and the Land in Colonial Concord. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004.
Feb 16	New England and Agricultural Improvement Campanella, Thomas J. Republic of Shade: New England and the American Elm. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003. Cumbler, John T. Reasonable Use: The People, the Environment, and the State, New England, 1790-1930. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. Judd, Richard W. Common Lands, Common People: The Origins of Conservation in Northern New England. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997. Stoll, Steven. Larding the Lean Earth: Soil and Society in Nineteenth-Century America. New York: Hill & Wang, 2002.
Feb 18	Industrialization and the rise of the cities Steinberg, Theodore. Nature Incorporated: Industrialization and the Waters of New England. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Greene, Ann Norton. Horses at Work: Harnessing Power in Industrial America. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008. McShane, Clay, and Joel A. Tarr. The Horse in the City: Living Machines in the Nineteenth Century. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007. Melosi, Martin V. The Sanitary City: Urban Infrastructure in America from Colonial Times to the Present. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000.
Feb 23	American Romanticism Huth, Hans. Nature and the American: Three Centuries of Changing Attitudes. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1957. Judd, Richard William. The Untilled Garden: Natural History and the Spirit of Conservation in America, 1740-1840. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Nash, Roderick. Wilderness and the American Mind. 4th ed. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001. Schmitt, Peter J. Back to Nature: The Arcadian Myth in Urban America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1969. Novak, Barbara. Nature and Culture: American Landscape Painting, 1825-1875. New York: Oxford University Press, 1980. Huntley, Jen A. The Making of Yosemite: James Mason Hutchings and the Origin of America's Most Popular National Park. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2011. Purchase, Eric. Out of Nowhere: Disaster and Tourism in the White Mountains. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999. Wulf, Andrea. Founding Gardeners: The Revolutionary Generation, Nature, and the Shaping of the American Nation. New York: Knopf, 2011.
Feb 25	Conservation Hays, Samuel P. Conservation and the Gospel of Efficiency: The Progressive Conservation Movement, 1890-1920. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1959. Stoll, Mark R. Inherit the Holy Mountain: Religion and the Rise of American Environmentalism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015.
Mar 1	Reading: Judd, Second Nature Study questions
Mar 3	First Midterm Exam
Mar 8	Transformation of the West: The Spanish, Russians, Mormons, and mining Worster, Donald. Rivers of Empire: Water, Aridity, and the Growth of the American West. New York: Pantheon, 1985. DeBuys, William. Enchantment and Exploitation: The Life and Hard Times of a New Mexico Mountain Range. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1985. Morse, Kathryn. The Nature of Gold: An Environmental History of the Klondike Gold Rush. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2003. Isenberg, Andrew C. Mining California: An Ecological History. New York: Hill & Wang, 2005.
Mar 10	Transformation of the West: The Great Plains West, Elliott. The Contested Plains: Indians, Goldseekers, & the Rush to Colorado. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2000. Lockwood, Jeffrey Alan. Locust: The Devastating Rise and Mysterious Disappearance of the Insect That Shaped the American Frontier. New York: Basic Books, 2004. Flores, Dan. Caprock Canyonlands: Journeys into the Heart of the Southern Plains. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990.
Mar 12–20	Spring Break
Mar 22	Progressive Conservation Hays, Samuel P. Conservation and the Gospel of Efficiency: The Progressive Conservation Movement, 1890-1920. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1959. Stoll, Mark R. Inherit the Holy Mountain: Religion and the Rise of American Environmentalism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015. Reiger, John F. American Sportsmen and the Origins of Conservation. 3rd ed., rev. & expanded. Corvallis: Oregon State University Press, 2001 [1975]. Coleman, Jon T. Vicious: Wolves and Men in America. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004. Righter, Robert W. The Battle over Hetch Hetchy: America's Most Controversial Dam and the Birth of Modern Environmentalism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. Runte, Alfred. National Parks: The American Experience. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1979. Steen, Harold K. The U.S. Forest Service: A History. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1976. Dunlap, Thomas R. Saving America's Wildlife. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988. Jacoby, Karl. Crimes Against Nature: Squatters, Poachers, Thieves, and the Hidden History of American Conservation. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001. Fiege, Mark. Irrigated Eden: The Making of an Agricultural Landscape in the American West. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1999. Hanson, Elizabeth. Animal Attractions: Nature on Display in American Zoos. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002. Kohlstedt, Sally Gregory. Teaching Children Science: Hands-on Nature Study in North America, 1890-1930. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010.
Mar 24	Progressive Conservation, cont.
Mar 29	Urban environmental problems; The 1920s Melosi, Martin V. Precious Commodity: Providing Water for America's Cities. Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2011. Melosi, Martin V. Garbage in the Cities: Refuse, Reform, and the Environment: 1880-1980. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1981. Cronon, William. Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West. New York: Norton, 1991. Stradling, David. Smokestacks and Progressives: Environmentalists, Engineers and Air Quality in America, 1881-1951. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999. Maysilles, Duncan. Ducktown Smoke: The Fight Over One of the South's Greatest Environmental Disasters. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011. Clements, Kendrick A. Hoover, Conservation, and Consumerism: Engineering the Good Life. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2000. Tobey, Ronald C. Saving the Prairies: The Life Cycle of the Founding School of American Plant Ecology, 1895–1955. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981. Worster, Donald. Nature's Economy: A History of Ecological Ideas. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
Mar 31	Reading: Worster, Dust Bowl
Apr 5	Second Midterm Exam
Apr 7	The New Deal Maher, Neil M. Nature's New Deal: The Civilian Conservation Corps and the Roots of the American Environmental Movement. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. Phillips, Sarah T. This Land, This Nation: Conservation, Rural America, and the New Deal. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Sutter, Paul S. Driven Wild: How the Fight against Automobiles Launched the Modern Wilderness Movement. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2002. White, Richard. The Organic Machine. New York: Hill and Wang, 1995.
Apr 12	New Forces, New Fears: Radiation Gutfreund, Owen D. Twentieth-Century Sprawl: Highways and the Reshaping of the American Landscape. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. Ackland, Len. Making a Real Killing: Rocky Flats and the Nuclear West. Albuquerque, N.M.: University of New Mexico Press, 1999. Findlay, John M., and Bruce William Hevly. Atomic Frontier Days: Hanford and the American West. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2011. Kirsch, Scott. Proving Grounds: Project Plowshare and the Unrealized Dream of Nuclear Earthmoving. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2005.
Apr 14	Dams and Wilderness Rome, Adam. The Bulldozer in the Countryside: Suburban Sprawl and the Rise of American Environmentalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Pearson, Byron E. Still the Wild River Runs: Congress, the Sierra Club, and the Fight to Save Grand Canyon. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2002. Reisner, Marc. Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water. New York: Viking Penguin, Inc., 1986. McCool, Daniel. River Republic: The Fall and Rise of America's Rivers. New York Columbia University Press, 2012. White, Richard. The Organic Machine. New York: Hill and Wang, 1995. Mitman, Gregg. Reel Nature: America's Romance with Wildlife on Film. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999. Nash, Roderick. Wilderness and the American Mind. 4th ed. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001. Hays, Samuel P. A History of Environmental Politics since 1945. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2000. Paris, Leslie. Children's Nature: The Rise of the American Summer Camp. New York: New York University Press, 2008. Schrepfer, Susan. Nature's Altars: Mountains, Gender, and American Environmentalism. Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2005. Stoll, Mark R. Inherit the Holy Mountain: Religion and the Rise of American Environmentalism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015. Buhs, Joshua Blu. The Fire Ant Wars: Nature, Science, and Public Policy in Twentieth-Century America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. Harvey, Mark W.T. A Symbol of Wilderness: Echo Park and the American Conservation Movement. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1994.
Apr 19	Reading: Andrew Hurley, Environmental Inequalities
Apr 21	The 1960s: Johnson and the Great Society and Environmental Crisis Biggs, David A. Quagmire: Nation-Building and Nature in the Mekong Delta. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2010. Connelly, Matthew James. Fatal Misconception: The Struggle to Control World Population. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008. Dewey, Scott Hamilton. Don't Breathe the Air: Air Pollution and U.S. Environmental Politics, 1945-1970. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2000. McWilliams, James E. American Pests: The Losing War on Insects from Colonial Times to DDT. New York: Columbia University Press, 2008. Taylor, Joseph E. Making Salmon: An Environmental History of the Northwest Fisheries Crisis. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1999. Milazzo, Paul Charles. Unlikely Environmentalists: Congress and Clean Water, 1955-1972. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2006.
Apr 26	The 1970s: Nixon and the Environmental Decade Rome, Adam. The Genius of Earth Day: How a 1970 Teach-in Unexpectedly Made the First Green Generation. New York: Hill and Wang, 2013. Flippen, J. Brooks. Nixon and the Environment. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2000.
Apr 28	The Carter Years: Toxic Waste, Nuclear Power, and Energy Crisis Murchison, Kenneth M. The Snail Darter Case: TVA versus the Endangered Species Act. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2007. Walker, J. Samuel. Three Mile Island: A Nuclear Crisis in Historical Perspective. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004. Walker, J. Samuel. The Road to Yucca Mountain: The Development of Radioactive Waste Policy in the United States. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009. Blum, Elizabeth D. Love Canal Revisited : Race, Class, and Gender in Environmental Activism. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2008.
May 3	The 1980s: Reagan and the End of an Bipartisan Environmentalism Widick, Richard. Trouble in the Forest: California's Redwood Timber Wars. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009. Short, C. Brandt. Ronald Reagan and the Public Lands: America's Conservation Debate, 1979- 1984. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1989.
May 5	Environmentalism in the 1980s and 1990s Steinberg, Ted. Acts of God: The Unnatural History of Natural Disaster in America. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Allen, Barbara L. Uneasy Alchemy: Citizens and Experts in Louisiana's Chemical Corridor Disputes. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003. McGurty, Eileen Maura. Transforming Environmentalism: Warren County, PCBs, and the Origins of Environmental Justice. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2007. Langston, Nancy. Toxic Bodies: Hormone Disruptors and the Legacy of DES. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010. Spears, Ellen Griffith. Baptized in PCBs: Race, Pollution, and Justice in an All-American Town. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014. Weart, Spencer R. The Discovery of Global Warming. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003. Price, Jennifer. Flight Maps: Adventures with Nature in Modern America. New York: Basic Books, 1999. Oreskes, Naomi, and Erik M. Conway. Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming. New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2010.
May 10	Book Reviews Due
May 14	Saturday, 1:30 p.m.-4:00 p.m.: FINAL EXAM