History of Sustainability, Spring 2012
AMH 3931-0352
Prof. Jack E. Davis
Rm: K-F 117
M, W, F :11:45-12:35 PM
Ofc Hours: 12:55-1:55 PM
Ofc phone: 273-3398
Summary
This course is offered to help satisfy a core requirement in the Sustainability Studies major. The course, however, is open to all students.
Sustainability is not a new concept. Historically, it has existed under different names: conservation, scientific management, efficiency, wise use, natural resource management, land ethic. It has been driven by economic, ethical, social, and political incentives. It has been shaped by religious or spiritual beliefs, public and corporate policy, by science and scientific trends, economic conditions, and, most importantly, by nature itself.
The proposed course will offer a survey of sustainability that deals with these principles and covers the full sweep of American history. It will begin not with an examination of EuroAmerican beliefs and practices but with native ones. The so-called seventh-generation concept did not originate with a modern-day cleaning product or as an ecological concept but with the cultural beliefs of traditional peoples. Students will explore the origins of the concept and its clash with EuroAmerican priorities in colonial America. Semantical differences are important to understanding that clash. In place of animist beliefs of natives, EuroAmericans imposed the label of “natural resources” on nature, creating a predetermined prism through which Americans still view nature and reinforcing their tendency to set themselves apart and above the natural world.
Students will also look at evolving imperatives in American society–local, regional, and global--that forced many Americans to rethink their relationship with the natural world. Tobacco planters in colonial and antebellum Virginia, for example, desperately searched for ways to sustain their fast-depleting soil to stanch population loss to fresh lands on the western frontier and further South. Settlement in territorial Florida was to a large extent a product of this challenge unmet and solutions ignored. Another theme of the course will be cataclysmic events (economic depression and so-called natural disasters, for example) and major events in American history (industrialization and urbanization; technological and scientific developments; the rise of the consumer republic, for example) that inspired calls for and innovation in sustainable practices. A review of different practices and the personalities behind them will constitute an important component of the course. Finally, the course will conclude with an analysis of sustainability today as a product of multiple historical antecedents.
As a principal goal, the course will provide students with an understanding of the past that helps them make more informed decisions about the present and future. As in any upper-level history course, students will be required to read a range of assigned texts and undertake research and writing projects (using archival and Internet sources, primary and secondary) that will enhance cognitive and communication skills.
Course Objectives:
C Expanding one’s knowledge of sustainability and its place in the larger American experience.
C Introducing the student to scholarship in the history of sustainability.
C Promoting critical thinking about social and environmental ethics.
C Advancing the student’s experience in the reading, researching, and writing tasks of the historian.
Improving the student’s cognitive and communication skills.
Course Requirements:
*The History of Sustainability will not resemble a traditional lecture course. Lecturing will be kept to a minimum. Instead, you the students will carry the discussion of the course. Each class, I will call the names of students randomly to answer questions based upon the reading(s) for the assigned day or week. Each student will receive a grade based on her/his response to the question. If you are unprepared or have not completed the reading and cannot answer the question, you will receive a zero for your effort. If you are not present when your name is called, you will receive a zero for your performance that day. Remember, class participation counts for 40% of your course grade.
(Please see last section of syllabus for a description of other course requirements.)
Course Grading Scale (see UF grading scale at 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.
Only course grades of C or better will satisfy Gordon Rule, general education, and college basic distribution credit.
Required Books:
Roderick Nash, Wilderness and the American Mind (Yale University Press, most recent edition).
class=WordSection3>Additional readings are on reserve in Library West or available on-line.
Weekly Schedule
The Historical Problem
Week I: Jan 9-13
Introduction to the Course
Defining Sustainability: What Does it Mean from a Humanities Perspective?
Donald Worster, The Wealth of Nature: Environmental History and the Ecological Imagination, chap 12.
Robert Goodland, “The Concept of Environmental Sustainability,” Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 26 (1995): 1-24 (in Jstor).
Week II: Jan 16-20
No class Monday, Jan
16, MLK Day
Where Humans Fit
William Cronon, “The Trouble with Wilderness,” Uncommon Ground: Toward Reinventing Nature, 69-90.
Comparing Native and EuroAmerican Perspectives: Economy, Society, and Natural Endowments
David Suzuki and Peter Knudtson, Wisdom of the Elders: Sacred Native Stories of Nature, chap 1, 1-22.
William Cronon, Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England, chaps 3-5.
Week III: Jan 23-27
Comparing Native and EuroAmerican Perspectives, cont.
From Infinite to Finite or Not
Jennifer Price, Flight Maps: Adventures With nature in Modern America, chap 1
Nash, Wilderness and the American Minds, chap 2.
The New Republic
Week IV: Jan 30-Feb 3
Forgotten Roots of American Sustainability
George Perkins Marsh, Man and Nature: Physical Geography as Modified by Human Action, chap 3, 128-329 (E-book).
Week V: Feb 6-10
Writing Mechanics Exercise Due
Forgotten Roots, cont.
Nash, Wilderness and the American Mind, chaps 3-5.
Week VI: Feb 13-17
Challenging Thoreau’s Romanticism
Donald Worster, Nature’s Economy: A History of Ecological Ideas, chaps 4 & 5.
Biophilia
Donald Worster, A Passion for Nature: The Life of John Muir , prologue.
Week VII: Feb 20-24
No
class Friday, Feb 24
National Identity
Alfred Runte, National Parks: The American Experience, prologue and chap 1.
Prologue to a New Gospel
Nash, Wilderness and the American Mind, chaps 6 & 7.
The
Science of Efficiency
Week VIII: Feb 27-March 2
Take-Home Essay 1 Due
Resource Sustainability During the Progressive Era and Great Depression
Woods and Water
Nash, Wilderness and the American Mind, chaps 8-10.
Week IX: Spring Break
March 5-9
Week X: March 12-16
The Urban Model
Cyrenus Wheeler,
"Sewers: Ancient and Modern," (Cayuga County Hist. Soc., 1887): 7-29, 42+
Available online at: http://www.sewerhistory.org/articles/design/1887_abs01/article.pdf
Week XI: March 19-23
Greenspace
Anne Whiston Spirn, “Constructing Nature: The Legacy of
Frederick Law Olmsted,” Uncommon Ground,
91-113.
Wildlife
Jared Orsi, “From Horicon to Hamburgers and Back Again:
Ecology, Ideology, and Wildfowl Management, 1917-1935,” Environmental History Review 18 (Winter 1994): 19-40.
Week XII: March 26-30
No class Wednesday of Friday, March 28 and 30
Sustaining
Agriculture in the Wake of Ruin
Worster, The Wealth
of Nature, chap 6.
Kevin Roose, “Sheep Lawn Mowers, and
Other Go-Getters,” New York Times,
November 2, 2011(Google the title to find on-line).
Week XIII: April 2-6
The Electric Good
and Better Life
Wesley Arden Dick, “When Dams
Weren’t Damned: The Public Power Crusade and Visions of the Good Life in the
Pacific Northwest in the 1930s,” Environmental
Review 13 (Autumn-Winter 1989): 113-53.
The Electric Good and Better Life, cont.
Marc Reisner, Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its
Disappearing Water, chaps, 5 & 6, 145-213.
Film: Cadillac Desert, episode 1.
Post-WWII
Week XIV: April 9-13
No class Friday, April 13
An Unsustainable Course
Lyndon B. Johnson,
“Beautification,” Roderick Nash ed., American
Environmentalism: Readings in
Conservation History, 181-86.
Rachel Carson, “Pesticides,” Nash,
American Environmentalism, 191-94.
President’s Science Advisory
Committee, “Pollution,” Nash, American
Environmentalism, 195-201.
Paul Ehrlich, “Overpopulation,”
Nash, American Environmentalism,
202-05.
Barry Commoner, “Fundamental
Causes of the Environmental Crisis,” Nash, American
Environmentalism, 206-14.
The Council on
Environmental Quality, “The State of the Environment,” Nash, American Environmentalism, 215-26.
Week XV: April 16-20
Mechanisms of Sustainability: High-tech Management and
Planning
Clamelot Paper Due
Samuel P. Hays, “From Conservation to
Environmentalism,” Nash, American
Environmentalism, 144-52.
Film: Gimme Green
Redefining
Parameters
Andrew Kirk, “Appropriating Technology” The Whole Earth Catalog and Counterculture
Environmental Politics,” Environmental
History 6 (July 2001): 374-94.
Mauricio Schoijet, “Limits to
Growth and the Rise of Catastrophism,” Environmental
History 4 (October 1999): 515-30.
Aquaculture and the Cedar Key Model
Week XVI: April 23-25
Take-Home Essay 2
Due
May 4: Pick up
final paper between 10 AM and 12 PM in my office
Course Requirements
Descriptions:
All written work for the course must be typed or computer
generated and in 12-point double-spaced print with default or one-inch margins.
Your work must also be presented in third-person language.
Writing Mechanics exercise can be found on my web site. Click the “Writing
Mechanics Exercise” link under the “Course Handouts” section. Printout 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 violate these rules.
Take-home essays will represent responses to a set of discussion prompts
posted on my web site. The prompts will be drawn from the assigned readings and
the course discussions, and you will be expected to use the course readings and
your class notes as sources to answer the questions (do not consult any other
sources). Each answer 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 exams that address each prompt in a rigorous and organized
manner are more likely to earn a decent grade. These grades, too, will be
dependent in part on your compliance with the rules in the “Writing Mechanics”
exercise.
Research essay,
“Clamelot”: The object of this assignment is to have you
research and write about the conversion of Cedar Key, Florida, from a
traditional fishing economy, following the 1995 gill-net ban, to an economy
based on sustainable aquaculture. You will need to hunt down research
materials, construct a paper, and prepare to discuss this historical development
in class. You should focus on themes of sustainability, which may take you
beyond Cedar Key (hint, the Suwanee River).The final product of the assignment
is a five-page, double-spaced writing assignment. Use default margin and footer
and header settings. Use 11- or 12-point font. You must also footnote or
endnote your sources and provide a bibliography of all sources consulted.
Remember, this is a history course, and your assignment is a history research
paper. So don’t write solely, or even extensively, about what Cedar Key is
doing now.
Again,
following the rules of the “Writing Mechanics” exercise is imperative to doing
work of full potential.
Class Rules are relatively minimal. You may take notes with a computer. But if I catch you emailing or texting, I reserve the right to post your maleficence on Facebook. Cell phones should be turned off as if you are traveling on a commercial airliner. If your phone rings, I reserve the right to answer it.
Plagiarism:
Keep in mind that your written assignments must represent
original work. You cannot copy the work of anyone else or text from the
Internet or any other source and pass it off as your own. 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 on the assignment, a grade that is final
and that cannot be made up. Please, if you have any questions about how you are
citing or using sources, come to me for the answers.
I CATCH A PLAGIARIST EVERY SEMESTER.
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.
UF Grading Scale
Please note UF’s 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
Additional
information can be found at the following link:
http://www.registrar.ufl.edu/catalog/policies/regulationgrades.html
http://www.isis.ufl.edu/minusgrades.html
Welcome, and good luck!