AMH 3630-25D3 American Environmental History

Syllabus

AMH 3630-25D3
American Environmental History
T (10:40-11:30), R (10:40-12:35 PM)/Flint 119
Professor Jack E. Davis Fall 2018 davisjac@ufl.edu Ofc. Flint 235
Ofc. Hrs.: T 11:40-12:40; R 12:40-2:40 273-3398
Course grader: Mr. Marcus Chatfield
mchatfield@ufl.edu

Text Box: This course is a substantive and interpretive inquiry into the historical roots of the nation’s contemporary environmental issues. It covers the period from before the Columbian explorations to the present. Presented within the context of the larger and more familiar historical experience, it is a relatively comprehensive overview of the relationship between people and their natural physical surroundings. It begins on the premise that the natural environment has been not only a passive object–which humans contemplated, exploited, or protected–but also an active variable in shaping the course of American history.

Students should finish this course with an expanded knowledge of the integral place of the environment in American history. A principal ambition of the course is to provide a more comprehensive understanding of the American experience. If we incorporate the human relationship with the environment into our study of the past, we gain clearer insight into the identity, beliefs, and values of human groups and how each defined its relationship with others.

Course Objectives:

Expanding ones knowledge of environmental history and its place in the larger American experience.
Introducing the student to scholarship in environmental history.
Promoting critical thinking about the human relationship with nature and its impact in the social relationships among different human groups.

Course Requirements:

Class participation 10%
Take-home essays (2 X 25%) 50%
Archive research and paper 20%
Internet research and paper 20%
Writing Mechanics exercise (factored into all writing assignments)

Course Grading Scale (see the UF grading scale at the end of syllabus):

A+ =97-100
A =94-96
A- =90-93
B+ =87-89
B =84-86
B- =80-83
C+ =77-79
C =74-76
C- =70-73
D =65-69

Assignments not completed earn a 0

Plagiarized assignment (see plagiarism section below) earn a 0

Assignments not turned in before or by stated due date will not be accepted. All assignments must be made available in hard copy. Emailed assignments cannot be accepted.

Assigned Texts:

Edward Abbey, Monkeywrench Gang (Harper, 2006) ISBN 0061129763
William Cronon, Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England (Hill & Wang) ISBN 0809016346
Ted Steinberg, Down to Earth: Nature’s Role in American History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002) ISBN 0195140109 Paper.
Donald Worster, Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s (Oxford University Press, 1983 or latest) ISBN 0195032128

Week I (Aug 23): Introduction: The Natural Web of History

Film

The Earth Day Special

Readings:

Steinberg, prologue
Mark Hertsgaard, While Washington Slept; Michael Shnayerson, The Rape of Appalachia, Vanity Fair 549 (May 2006) (access though InfoTrac or LexisNexis).

Week II (Aug 28 & 30): New World Meets Old

Readings:

Steinberg, chapters 1 and 2

Week III (Sept 4 & 6): Anglos and Indians

Readings:

Cronon, all
Writing Mechanics Exercise Due Thursday

Week IV (Sept 11 & 13**): Cronon continued; the 19th-Century LandscapePerceptions and Realities

Readings:

Steinberg, chapters 3 and 4.

Week V (Sept 18 & 20):

King Cotton and the Civil War

Readings:

Steinberg, chapters 5 and 6; Dianne D. Glave and Mark Stoll, editors, To Love the Wind and the Rain: African Americans and American and Environmental History (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005) 0822958996, chapters 2 and 3 (on reserve in Library West)

Week VI (Sept 25 & 27): The New South, the West, and the Locomotive Force of Change

Readings:

Steinberg, chapters 7 and 8.

Week VII (Oct 2 & 4**): The Urban Wilderness

Film:

Cadillac Desert: Mulhollands Dream

Readings:

Steinberg, chapter 10.
Take-Home Essay # 1 Due

Week VIII (Oct 9 & 11): Organized Conservation

Readings:

Steinberg, chapter 9.

Week IX (Oct 16 & 18**): Organized Conservation cont.

Readings:

Carolyn Merchant, Women of the Progressive Conservation Movement, 1900-1916, Environmental Review 8 (Spring 1984): 57-86.
Internet Research Paper Due

Week X (Oct 23 & 25): Sunshine Environments

Readings:

Jack E. Davis, An Everglades Providence: Marjory Stoneman Douglas and the American Environmental Century, chapters 13,14, 16 (on reserve Library West).

Week XI (Oct 30 & Nov 1): Economic Depression and New Deal Conservation

Readings:

Worster, all.

Film:

Cadillac Desert: An American Nile

Week XII (Nov 6 & 8): The Continuing Saga of Food and Water

Readings:

Steinberg: chapters 11 and 12

Film:

Cadillac Desert: The Mercy of Nature

Archive Assignment Due

Week XIII (Nov 13 & 15): Postwar Consumer Society; the Green Racial Divide

Readings:

Steinberg, chapter 13 and 14; Glave and Stoll eds., chapters 8, 12; Elizabeth Kolbert, Turf Wars, The New Yorker (July 21, 2008) (access through UF Libraries E-Journal Locator).

Film:

Rachel Carsons Silent Spring

Week XIV (Nov 20): Environmental Backlash; Environmental Justice

Thanksgiving Nov 22

Readings:

Abbey, all; Steinberg, chapter 15.

Week XV (Nov 27 & 29): Backlash continued

No class Tuesday Dec 2

Week XVI (Dec 4)

Take-Essay #2 Due
Final Exam Day (You have no in-class exams in this course.)

Course Requirements Descriptions:

All written work for the course must be typed or computer generated and in 12-point double-spaced print. Your work must also be presented in third-person language.

Class participation means that students must come to class prepared to participate in discussions. Classes will be conducted in both a lecture and seminar format. Attendance is required. Doctors notes for a cold or flu or other such common ailments do not amount to an excused absence.

Beyond two absences, each additional absence occurring will result in one point deducted from your final grade. If the class is particularly lethargic when it should be animated and eager to discuss the reading assignment, the frustrated professor deserves the right to give a pop (i.e., surprise) quiz. Your experience in the course will largely depend on how well prepared you are for class.

Writing Mechanics exercise can be found on my web site. Download and answer the questions by circling that which you believe to be the correct response. You will be required to follow the rules of writing mechanics in all writing assignments for the course. Up to five points will be deducted from your assignment grade if you fail to follow these rules.

Take-home essays will represent responses to a list of essay questions posted on my web site. The prompts for discussion will be drawn from the assigned readings and the course lectures, and you will be expected to use the course readings and your class notes as sources to address the assignment. Your response must be presented in essay format, using formal, academic language and style (i.e., complete sentences, tightly constructed paragraphs, no colloquialisms). Do not, in other words, provide answers in lists or bullets. Those essays that address each prompt in a rigorous and organized manner are more likely to earn a decent grade. These grades, too, will be determined part by your compliance with the rules in the Writing Mechanics exercise.

Internet exercise requires that you write a five-page paper, with footnotes and bibliography attached, using original-source materials from one or more of the following academic websites: Florida Heritage Collection, Reclaiming the Everglades, Southwest Florida Environmental Documents, and Floridas Natural Heritage. Links to all these sources are available on my website. Your paper should have an environmental topic, such as the agricultural exploitation of the Everglades, the views and work of an environmental activist, or the impact of nature on early Florida tourism. Be careful not to simply retell or describe what you find in on-line documentssuch as letters, corporate papers, advertisements, and diaries. You should put your source materials and topic in historical context. Doing so will require you to utilize secondary-source materialshistory books, biographies, etc. For example, if you find on-line information about drainage in the Everglades in the early twentieth century, you will need to consult books about important historical individuals, places, or events. (ALL THIS IS IMPORTANT TO EARNING A GOOD GRADE.)

Archive exercise asks you to write a five-page paper with footnotes and bibliography attached. You will be required to use archival materials from the University of Florida Special and Area Studies Collections. The best materials from these collections and for the purpose of this course focus on Florida history. You might write a short environmental history of your home county; or about the human-nature relationship as recorded in the letters, journal, or diary of an early Florida pioneer; or about the environments that early travel writers of the South encountered. We will attend an orientation at the Special Collections library that will familiarize you with the primary-source materials available. One objective of this assignment is to give you experience working in archival materialshard-copy matter as opposed to Internet sources. Such materials should form the bulk of your sources used for this paper. As with the Internet paper, you will need to present your subject in historical context.

Again, following the rules of the Writing Mechanics exercise is imperative to completing work of full potential.

Other Business:

Plagiarism:

Keep in mind that your written assignments must represent original work. You cannot copy the words, phrases, arguments, ideas, and conclusions of someone else or of another source (including Internet sources) without giving proper credit to the person or source by using both quotation marks and a footnote. Do not cobble together paragraphs or passages of separate texts and then try to claim that you have done original and legitimate work. You must write with your own ideas and in your own words. If you copy the words of someone else without putting those words in quotation marks, REGARDLESS OF CITING THE SOURCE, you are plagiarizing. Plagiarism is theft, and it is academic dishonesty. You can be reported to the Dean of Students office for plagiarism, and the incident may then become a permanent part of your academic record. Plagiarism will earn you a failing grade in the course, a grade that is final and that cannot be made up. If you have any questions about how you are citing or using sources, come to me for the answers. Please also review the universitys honesty policy at: {http://www.dso.ufl.edu/judicial/academic.htm}.C:\Users\Jack\Dropbox\courses\environmental\{http:\

Classroom Assistance:

Please do not hesitate to contact the instructor during the semester if you have any individual concerns or issues that need to be discussed. Students requesting classroom accommodation must first register with the Dean of Students Office {http://www.dso.ufl.edu/drp/}. The Dean of Students Office will provide documentation to the student who must then provide that documentation to the instructor when requesting accommodation.

History Majors:

If you are a history major or minor and wish to receive important announcements on courses, scholarships, awards, and the Phi Alpha Theta Honor Society, please sign on to the history department listserv. Compose a message to: majordomo@clas.ufl.edu. In the text of the message, type the following: subscribe hist-ba@history.ufl.edu

Alpata: A Journal of History

Keep in mind that the undergraduate- and graduate-student members of Phi Alpha Theta History Honor Society at the University of Florida publish an academic journal each spring. In the fall, the journal editors will be sending out a call for submissions (articles and book reviews) to the journal. The journal is also looking for talented students who would like to serve on the editorial board. Please contact me if youre interested.

UF Grading Scale

Please note UFs new grading scale with the addition of minuses.

A = 4.0
A- = 3.67
B+ = 3.33
B = 3.0
B- = 2.67
C+ = 2.33
C = 2.0
C- = 1.67
D+ = 1.33
D = 1.0
D- = 0.67
E = 0.0
E1 = 0.0 Stopped attending or participating prior to end of class
I (incomplete) = 0.0

Take-Home Essay 1 DUE OCTOBER 4

To complete the take-home assignment, you are required to write a single, flowing narrative (with paragraphs) responding to the prompt below. Write no more than 5 pages in third-person language and 12-point font, using double space between lines. Save penalty points: follow the rules outlined in the Grammar and Style Guide. Finally, do not consult any sources outside class lectures and assigned reading materials (those on the syllabus), and in your paper demonstrate a good use of the latter.

Prompt:

Define environmental history and identify the principal questions it addresses.

What was the Columbian Exchange and how did it change the Old World and New World?

Discuss Cronon’s pioneering work in environmental history. How did the differing ecological relationships between European settlers and natives of North America shape the social relationship between the two groups? Ensure you discuss how European ecocultural ways altered Indian relationships with the land, including the native ability to live with nature as before European contact.

Describe the American relationships with environment in the 19^th century during slavery, the Civil War, and postwar western expansion? Think in terms of water, soil, and natural resources. Organize your response around the three regions of the country on which we have focused, Northeast, South (including black and white southerners), West.

Good Luck!

Take-Home Essay 2

To complete the take-home assignment, you are required to write a single, flowing narrative (with paragraphs) responding to the prompts below. Write no more than 5 pages in third-person language and 12-point font, using double space between lines. Save penalty points: follow the rules outlined in the Style Guide Standards. Finally, do not consult any sources outside class lectures and assigned reading materials

Begin your essay with the Dust Bowl. What was it and what were the various causes, natural and humanmade, responsible for it? Discuss the New Deal response to it, and how and why, according to Donald Worster, it was a failure. (Don’t forget about the role of ecologists.)

Continue your essay by discussing the direction in which America moved after World War II regarding agriculture, the manufacturing economy, and consumer society, discussing such variables as the rise of the baby boom, American suburbs, the automobile culture, and fast food. Discuss also the environmental consequences related to changing America.

Finally, describe the organized response to the ecological imperatives in the last decades of the 20^th century. How were conservation groups changing by the 1960s when they made the shift to environmentalism? Were their concerns simply wildlife protection and wilderness preservation?

Ensure you address the shift from traditional conservationism (including aesthetic preservation) to environmentalism. Both were human-centered in philosophy but still different. Explain that difference. (Don’t forget the biological link found in environmentalism that did not exist in conservationism.)