AMH 5930-3867

American Environmental History, Fall 2005

T11-E2 (6:15-9:10 pm) CBD 230

Professor Jack E. Davis Ofc. Flint 235

davisjac@ufl.edu 392-0271, ext. 251

Ofc. Hrs.: T/R 2-3:30 pm

Presented within the context of the larger and more familiar historical experience, this course is an overview of the relationship between humans and their natural physical surroundings. If we as students of history ignore that relationship and reduce nature to an inert backdrop to the drama of human actions, Ted Steinberg argues in a recent issue of The American Historical Review (see below), we limit the results of our historical inquiry. Taking this point a step further, we should avoid the trap of conceptualizing environmental history as nothing more than the study of the human impact on nature or as the historical antecedents of the nation’s contemporary environmental issues. We should instead begin with the premise that the natural environment was not a passive object--which humans simply contemplated, exploited, or protected; it was instead an active variable that shaped the course of American history. Throughout human history, physical surroundings to a large extent determined the ways in which humans organized their lives. If we incorporate these ideas into our study of history, we gain greater insight into the identity, beliefs, and values of human groups and how each defined its relationship with others. As William Cronon writes in his seminal Changes in the Land, "the great strength of ecological analysis in writing history is its ability to uncover processes and long-term changes which might otherwise remain invisible" (vii).

This course covers the full sweep of U.S. history, from pre-Columbian explorations to the present; yet it is not intended to provide a comprehensive survey of U.S. environmental history. The course instead has been designed to introduce students to major works representing a fairly broad sampling of approaches to and topics in environmental history. As in any field within our discipline, no single mode of inquiry or interpretive category defines environmental history. Scholars with interests in social, political, intellectual, labor, gender, urban, and regional history, and history of science can all be found working in environmental history.

Regardless of their individual primary field of choice, students have the opportunity to take from this course analytic tools that can help advance their study of history. One of the course’s objectives is to provide a working knowledge of the methodologies, interpretive categories, and historiography in environmental history. With this knowledge should come a new understanding of the role of environmental history, its potential impact on other fields of history, and its contributions to the study of the past. Students should also treat the course as an opportunity to improve their skills as an academic historian--critically analyzing works of history, asking heuristic questions, researching all types of sources in any number of environments, and presenting their findings in a cogently argued and clearly written text.

Chicago Manual of Style worksheet

3 essays x 10% = 30%

• Research Paper
• prospectus/bibliography
• presentation 40%

( Please see the last section of the syllabus for a description of these requirements.)

Required Texts:

(Students are required to search for and find all other assigned course readings.)

Week I (Aug 30): Introduction: The Natural Web of History; What is Nature?

Roderick F. Nash, ed., American Environmentalism: Readings in Conservation History (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1989), 1-24.

"Introduction," Paradise Lost?, 1-20.

Janisse Ray, Ecology of a Cracker Childhood (Minneapolis: Milkweed Editions, 1999), 65-69.

Film: "Guns, Germs, and Steel" (episode one).

Week II (Sept 6): History and the Environmental Determinist Model

Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel.

Film: "Guns, Germs, and Steel" (episode two or three).

Week III (Sept 13): Social and Environmental History

Cronon, Changes in the Land.

Week IV (Sept 20): Modes of Production and the Wealth of Nature

Stewart, "What Nature Suffers to Groe."

Week V (Sept 27): Nature, Nostalgia, and Creating Wilderness

Spence, Dispossessing the Wilderness.

Dave Nelson, "‘Improving’ Paradise: The Civilian Conservation Corps and Environmental Change in Florida," Paradise Lost?, 92-112.

Film: "Cadillac Desert" (episode one).

Week VI (Oct 4): The Patchwork of Civilization

Worster, Dust Bowl.

Film: The Grapes of Wrath

Week VII (Oct 11): Women and the Environment

Carolyn Merchant, Earthcare.

Scott Hamilton Dewey, "‘Is This What We Came to Florida For?’: Florida Women and the Fight Against Air Pollution in the 1960s," Making Waves: Female Activists in Twentieth-Century Florida, Jack E. Davis and Kari Frederickson eds. (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2003), 197-25.

Film: "Cadillac Desert" (episode two).

Week VIII (Oct 18): Defining Environments: Public Health and Poisoned Space

Warren, Brush with Death.

Week IX (Oct 25): Changes on the Conservationist Landscape

Gottlieb, Forcing the Spring.

Jack E. Davis, "‘Conservation is Now a Dead Word’: Marjory Stoneman Douglas and the Transformation of American Environmentalism," Paradise Lost?, 297-325.

Week X (Nov 1): Technology and the Contaminated Society

Bruce Stephenson, "A ‘Monstrous Desecration’: Dredge and Fill in Boca Ciega Bay," Paradise Lost?, 326-49.

Film: Rachel Caron’s Silent Spring

Week XI (Nov 8): History with a Political Agenda

Steinberg, Acts of God.

Ted Steinberg, "Down to Earth: Nature, Agency, and Power in History," American Historical Review 103 (June 2002): 798-820 (read on-line responses at www.theaha.org).

Week XII (Nov 15): Environmental Injustice and the Modern Urban Matrix

Hurley, Environmental Inequalities.

XIII (Nov 22): Public Policy, National Politics, and the Florida Model

McCally, The Everglades.

Jack E. Davis, "Alligators and Plume Birds: The Despoliation of Florida’s Living Aesthetic," Paradise Lost?, 235-59.

XIV (Nov 29): Florida continued

Gordon E. Harvey, "‘We Must Free Ourselves . . . from the Tattered Fetters of the Booster Mentality": Big Cypress Swamp and the Politics of Environmental Protection in 1970s Florida," Paradise Lost?, 350-74.

Lee Irby, "‘The Big Ditch’: The Rise and Fall of the Cross-Florida Barge Canal," Paradise Lost?, 375-97.

Archie Carr, "The Bird and the Behemoth," in Archie Carr, A Naturalist in Florida: A Celebration of Nature or Jeff Ripple, Wild Heart of Florida.

XV (Dec 6): The Last Hurrah

Conclusions and Paper Presentations

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 has two requirements. First, students must complete the assigned readings of the week and come to class prepared to discuss the scholarly merit of the work. Second, they will be responsible for leading one class discussion. The discussion leaders should come prepared with a set of questions to direct the seminar.

Historiography contribution asks one or two students to assume the responsibility of making an oral presentation summarizing scholarly work on the theme of the week. The student or students should compile a written bibliography of that work and provide copies to his/her classmates.

Review essays should be approximately 750 words in length each and cover the reading for one’s assigned weeks. The written reviews will be due the week after the assigned reading has been discussed in class. With book reviews from academic journals serving as a model, the essays should identify the author’s central argument; evaluate the author’s research, empirical analysis, and success in supporting her/his interpretation; and assess the book’s organization and quality of presentation. Essay grades will in part be determined by the student’s consistency in following the rules covered in the Chicago Manual of Style worksheet.

Research paper grades are based on (1) turning in a prospectus/bibliography on the assigned date, (2) an in-class presentation of the research undertaken for the paper and the conclusions articulated in the paper, (3) consistency in following the rules of the Chicago Manual of Style worksheet, and (4) content of work completed. Part of the exercise of writing a research paper requires one to choose and conceptualize one’s own topic. Students may pursue any topic that is related to the subject (and chronology) of the course, and research papers (approximately 5,000 words, separate of notes and bibliography) must represent original work. Please ensure that you read, consult, memorize, and otherwise obey the "Research Paper" handout provided on my web site.

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 quotation marks and a foot note. 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. Plagiarism is grounds for an automatic 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 university’s honesty policy at: {http://www.dso.ufl.edu/judicial/academic.htm}.{http://

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.

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.