Course Description
The history of Americans' interaction with the environment, from the Ice Age to the present day. Topics include native and colonial American land use, the rise of industrial capitalism, nature and the Civil War, Progressive conservation, and the postwar environmental movement.
Athena Title
AMER ENVIRON HIST
Equivalent Courses
Not open to students with credit in HIST 3160
Non-Traditional Format
This course differs from the non-Honors version by requiring more intense reading (full-length, graduate-level books), more writing (longer reading analyses and a longer final paper), and more discussion (20 per cent of the final grade is based on discussion).
Prerequisite
Permission of Honors
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Course Objectives
The principal objectives of this course are to teach students to think deeply and critically about the relationship between nature and humans in American history, to teach them to ask questions of the past that will enable them to better understand the environmental issues of the present, and to sensitize them to the historical forces and contingencies that shape those contemporary issues. In general, students will be expected to read a great deal of primary and secondary sources, and to use various writing assignments to analyze and critique those readings in significant depth. Those writing assignments will also be expected to be stylistically appropriate, incorporating footnotes, clear organization, firm editing, and polished prose.
Topical Outline
Native American land use; anthropogenic fire, the "ecological Indian" myth, Puritans, wilderness, John Locke, capitalism, co- modification, industrial capitalism, the Civil War, Progressive conservation and preservation, Gifford Pinchot, John Muir, urban environment, 1918 flu epidemic, industrial agriculture, fossil fuels, postwar affluence, suburbanization and the automobile, the great "dam battles" of the 1950s, the "environmental management state," radical environmentalism, Ronald Reagan, James Watt and anti-environmental backlash.