Course Description
The course explores significant changes to the American Landscape, pre-European settlement to today, including transportation systems, cities, agricultural and resource extractive landscapes, and iconic dam and bridge projects. All of those interventions are informed by a sociological and environmental critique suggesting a more equitable and ecologically healthy way to build.
Additional Requirements for Graduate Students:
Graduate students will engage in in-depth research on a particular mega-project in order to offer an informed social or ecological cost benefit analysis. For example, while transcontinental railroads connected east and west and provided long term economic benefit, they were also built on the backs of ethnic minorities and caused massive deforestation.
Athena Title
Structuring American Landscape
Semester Course Offered
Offered spring
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Course Objectives
Skills: To increase writing skills as a consequence of several critical writing assignments To learn critical judgment skills by regularly assessing the social and environmental costs and benefits of major landscape interventions through time Knowledge: To learn of the massive landscape changes that occurred in the America from pre-settlement to today To learn about mega projects such as canals, transcontinental railroads, and the interstate highway system To learn about certain iconic projects such as Hoover Dam and the Brooklyn Bridge To learn about more equitable and environmentally sensitive ways to build including affordable housing and green infrastructure projects Values: To see material progress as a double edged sword that can improve the quality of life for some, while bringing social and environmental costs to others
Topical Outline
The course is divided into three major sections: Pre-settlement to the Closing of the Frontier; Making Modern America; and A Better Path Forward Pre-settlement to the Closing of the Frontier Week One: Native Tribes and the Landscape; Early Agriculture; Contributions of African Americans to Rice Culture. Writing Assignment One Week Two: Development of Towns in New England and the Middle Colonies and Plantation Culture in the South; Early Cities and Disease and Sanitation Week Three: Further Development of Cities; Westward Expansion; Agriculture, and Resource Extraction and Canal Building Week Four: Western and Midwestern Cities; Gold Rush and Landscape Change; Regional Railroads. Writing Assignment Two Week Five: Post-Civil War and Transcontinental Railroads; Chinese, Native American and Environmental Costs; Iconic Projects such as Brooklyn Bridge. Exam One Making Modern America (1890s to Present) Week Six: Urban Change and Migrations (Rural to Urban; African American Migration North); Slum Conditions, Tenements, and Social Activism (Jacob Riis, Jane Addams, etc.); Social Costs of Zoning; Writing Assignment Three Week Seven: Country Life Movement and Landscape Change; City Beautiful; Early Skyscrapers; Parks Movement. Graduate Student Paper Assigned Week Eight: Early Twentieth Century Transportation, the Automobile and Street Car Lines; Condition of American Roads and Eisenhower’s Tour. Writing Assignment Four Week Nine: Major River Control Projects, Tennessee Valley Authority and Hoover Dam; Post-WWII Suburban and Urban Development; The Social Costs of Urban Renewal; Interstate Highway System (which neighborhoods were lost) Week Ten: From Suburban Sprawl to Edge Cities, the White Flight; Return to the Center; Big Agriculture; Information Technology and Landscape Change. Exam Two A Better Path Forward Week Eleven: Nineteenth and Early 20th-Century Conservation and Preservation Roots (the Transcendentalists, George Perkins Marsh, John Muir, etc.); National Parks and the National Park System Week Twelve: Post-WWII Environmental Movement and Civil Right Movement Coincide; Laws change but Many Places do not. Writing Assignment Five Week Thirteen: From Fossil Fuels to Renewable Energy; Ian McHarg and Design with Nature; Design for a Just City; Graduate Paper and Research Notes Due Week Fourteen: The Inequity of Climate Change; New York’s Big U Project, Storm Surge Protection and Recreation Space. Writing Assignment Six Week Fifteen: Green Infrastructure, Fish Kills Landfill Project; The New Detroit, An Environmental Ethic and Social Imperative; Philadelphia’s EPA Stormwater System; Course Conclusion. Exam Three