Required Reading and Writing
The following books are required for the course. Additional articles and book excerpts will also be assigned and distributed.
Basso, Keith. Wisdom Sits in Places. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1996. ISBN: 9780826317247.
Cronon, William. Changes in the Land. New York, NY: Hill & Wang, 2003. ISBN: 9780809016341.
Solnit, Rebecca. River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and Technological Wild West. New York, NY: Penguin, 2004. ISBN: 9780142004104.
White, Richard. The Organic Machine. New York, NY: Hill & Wang, 1996. ISBN: 9780809015832.
Worster, Donald. Dust Bowl. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2004 [1979]. ISBN: 9780195174885.
| LEC # | TOPICS | READINGS | STUDY QUESTIONS |
|---|---|---|---|
| Week 1. Introduction and problems of definition | |||
| 1 | Course overview and introductory lecture | ||
| 2 | Discussion: defining Technology and Nature |
Williams, Raymond. "Ideas of Nature." In Problems in Materialism and Culture: Selected Essays. London, UK: Verso, 1996, pp. 67-85. ISBN: 9780860917298. Marx, Leo. "Technology: The Emergence of a Hazardous Concept." Social Research 64, no. 3 (Fall 1997): 965-988. | (PDF) |
| Week 2. Colonial American land use | |||
| 3 | A brief history of ecological change in North America in the eighteenth century | Cronon, pp. 3-107 and 159-170. | (PDF) |
| 4 | Discussion | ||
| Week 3. Places and how we know them | |||
| 5 | Discussion | Basso, pp. 3-104. | (PDF) |
| Week 4. Industrial America in the countryside | |||
| 6 | Imposing an industrial order on the antebellum landscape | Steinberg, Theodore. Nature Incorporated: Industrialization and the Waters of New England. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2004, pp. 1-75. ISBN: 9780521527118. | (PDF) |
| 7 | Discussion | ||
| Week 5. The aesthetics of the industrial landscape in antebellum America | |||
| 8 | "Devilish iron horse" and "Aeolian harp": artistic responses to industrialization |
Thoreau, Henry David. "Where I Lived, and What I Lived For," "Sounds," "Solitude," "Spring," and "Conclusion." In Walden. 1854. (View text and download from The Thoreau Reader.) Marx, L. The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2000, pp. 242-265. ISBN: 9780195133516. | |
| 9 | Discussion | (PDF) | |
| Week 6. Railroads and colonization | |||
| 10 | View film: The Iron Road. Directed by Neil Goodwin. PBS: The American experience, 1990, 60 min. | (PDF) | |
| 11 | Discussion |
Stilgoe, John. Metropolitan Corridor: Railroads and the American Scene. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1985, pp. 189-221. ISBN: 9780300034813. Cronon, William. Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, 1992, pp. 55-93. ISBN: 9780393308730. | |
| Week 7. Making an agricultural landscape | |||
| 12 |
View films: The Plow That Broke the Plains. Directed by Pare Lorentz, 1936, 25 min. (View and download at the Internet Archive.) The River. Directed by Pare Lorentz, 1938, 31 min. (View and download (Part 1, Part 2) at the Internet Archive). |
Cronon, William. Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, 1992, pp. 97-147. ISBN: 9780393308730. Steinberg, Theodore. Down to Earth: Nature's Role in American History. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2002, pp. 71-115. ISBN: 9780195140101. | (PDF) |
| 13 | Discussion | ||
| Week 8. Technological systems and the transformation of time and space in the late nineteenth century | |||
| 14 | Networking nation and nature: a case study of weather telegraphy, 1870-1891 | Solnit, Rebecca. River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and Technological Wild West. New York, NY: Penguin, 2004. ISBN: 9780142004104. | |
| 15 | Discussion | ||
| Week 9. Creating American parklands | |||
| 16 | Conservation and the scientific management of nature | ||
| 17 | Discussion |
Pinchot, Gifford. "Prosperity," "The New Patriotism," and "The Present Battle." Chapters 1, 11 and 12 in The Fight for Conservation. New York, NY: Doubleday, Page & Co., 1910. ( Muir, John. "The Wild Parks and Forest Reservations of the West." Chapter 1 in Our National Parks. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin & Co., 1901, pp. 1-36. ( Cronon, William. "The Trouble with Wilderness." In Uncommon Ground: Toward Reinventing Nature. Edited by William Cronon. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Co., 1995, pp. 69-90. ISBN: 9780393038729. Steinberg, Theodore. Down to Earth: Nature's Role in American History. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2002, pp. 138-56. ISBN: 9780195140101. | (PDF) |
| Week 10. Water and the hydraulic society | |||
| 18 | View film: Cadillac Desert. Directed by Jon Else and Linda Harrar, 1997, 60 min. | Worster, pp. 10-25 and 100-180. | (PDF) |
| 19 | Discussion | ||
| Week 11. Labors of and in nature: rivers, energy, and work | |||
| 20 | Discussion | White. | (PDF) |
| Week 12. The landscape of postwar suburbia | |||
| 21 | Levittown and the building of the suburban family ideal | ||
| 22 | Discussion | Selected primary sources from Nicolaides, Becky M., and Andrew Wiese, eds. The Suburb Reader. New York, NY: Routledge, 2006, pp. 260-272, 298, 303, and 316-320. ISBN: 9780415945936. | |
| Week 13. The landscape of food | |||
| 23 | How food became fast, or, industrial agriculture in the twentieth century |
Pollan, Michael. "Naturally: How Organic became a Marketing Niche and a Multibillion-dollar Industry." The New York Times Magazine, May 13, 2001, pp. 30-37, 57-58, and 63-64. Steinberg, Theodore. Down to Earth: Nature's Role in American History. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2002, pp. 138-56. ISBN: 9780195140101. | |
| 24 | Discussion | ||
| Week 14. Presentations of student research projects | |||
| 25 | Student presentations | ||
| 26 | Student presentations (cont.) | ||
