Technology and Nature in American History

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Technology and Nature in American History posted by member150_php on 2/18/2009

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Abstract/Syllabus

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Technology and Nature in American History

Spring 2008

A photo of two rows of tall concrete grain elevators with a few railroad cars.

Grain elevators dwarf a few rail cars near Amarillo, Texas. The growth of railroads and industrial-scale agriculture are among the topics covered in this class. (Photo by Jack Delano, March 1943. Courtesy of The Library of Congress Flickr Commons project.)

Course Description

This course considers how the visual and material world of "nature" has been reshaped by industrial practices, ideologies, and institutions, particularly in nineteenth- and twentieth-century America. Topics include land-use patterns; the changing shape of cities and farms; the redesign of water systems; the construction of roads, dams, bridges, irrigation systems; the creation of national parks; ideas about wilderness; and the role of nature in an industrial world. From small farms to suburbia, Walden Pond to Yosemite, we will ask how technological and natural forces have interacted, and whether there is a place for nature in a technological world.

Acknowledgement

This class is based on one originally designed and taught by Prof. Deborah Fitzgerald. Her Fall 2004 version can be viewed by following the link under Archived Courses on the right side of this page.

Syllabus

Course Description

The central question of this course is how technological and natural forces have interacted in the making of modern America. Beginning in colonial America and ending in the twenty-first century, we will consider how the visual and material world of "nature" has been reshaped by industrial practices, ideologies, and institutions, with a particular emphasis on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Through our lectures and readings we will visit a variety of landscapes—from small farms to suburbs, from Walden Pond to Yosemite National Park—in an effort to uncover not only the ways that technologies have shaped the landscapes around us, but also the ways that the natural world has resisted and redirected technological change. Topics include land-use patterns; the changing shape of cities and farms; the redesign of water systems; the construction of roads, dams, bridges, irrigation systems; the creation of national parks; ideas about wilderness; aesthetic responses to industrialization; and the role of nature in a "technological world."

General Course Requirements

Students are expected to attend all sessions and to be active participants in class discussion. More than two (2) unexcused absences will have an adverse effect on your grade. As this is a Communication-Intensive (CI) course, students will be assessed on both oral and written work: students will be required to lead class discussion at least once during the semester, to participate actively in each class discussion, to write frequent 1-2 page informal reading response papers, to write three (3) formal papers of increasing length, and to submit a draft and revision of the final research paper.

Required Reading and Writing

The following books are required for the course. Additional articles and book excerpts will also be assigned and distributed.

Basso, Keith. Wisdom Sits in Places. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1996. ISBN: 9780826317247.

Cronon, William. Changes in the Land. New York, NY: Hill & Wang, 2003. ISBN: 9780809016341.

Solnit, Rebecca. River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and Technological Wild West. New York, NY: Penguin, 2004. ISBN: 9780142004104.

White, Richard. The Organic Machine. New York, NY: Hill & Wang, 1996. ISBN: 9780809015832.

Worster, Donald. Dust Bowl. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2004 [1979]. ISBN: 9780195174885.

Please note that the reading assignments should be completed before class on the day they are listed.

Students will be required to write 1-2 page reading response papers in preparation for weekly discussions. Response papers will be graded. Please email me your response papers no later than midnight the night before our discussion so that I can circulate them to the rest of the class. Response papers have two purposes: to help you generate ideas and questions about the week's topic, and to serve as a starting point for our discussion.

There are three (3) formal writing assignments in this class, as well as a revision of your final paper. I will distribute specific assignment descriptions for each paper as the course gets underway. Today is not too early to start thinking about your final paper, which can explore one of the course topics or a subject related to your other coursework or interests. I will help you design your topics and identify primary and secondary sources, and I will provide more specific research guidelines as you proceed.

Grading Policy

Students are expected to adhere to principles of academic honesty in their work. All written work must be a student's own original work. (Collaboration on essay assignments is not permitted.) Any and all references to other sources within your own paper must be properly documented according to the guidelines in the Chicago Manual of Style. If you have any questions about quoting, paraphrasing, or referring to the work of others, please ask! MIT's Academic Integrity handbook is a valuable resource that I urge you all to consult.

Grades will be calculated as follows:

Grading criteria.
ACTIVITIES	PERCENTAGES
Paper 1 (5 pages)	20%
Paper 2 (5-7 pages)	25%
Paper 3 (10-12 pages)	40%
Class participation: Reading response papers - 5% Leading of class discussion - 5% General participation in weekly discussions - 5%	15%

Please note that late papers will be penalized unless you have made prior arrangements with me for an extension.

Course Schedule

Course schedule.
LEC #	TOPICS	KEY DATES
Week 1. Introduction and problems of definition
1	Course overview and introductory lecture
2	Discussion: defining Technology and Nature
Week 2. Colonial American land use
3	A brief history of ecological change in North America in the eighteenth century
4	Discussion	Reading response paper due
Week 3. Places and how we know them
5	Discussion	Reading response paper due
Week 4. Industrial America in the countryside
6	Imposing an industrial order on the antebellum landscape
7	Discussion
Week 5. The aesthetics of the industrial landscape in antebellum America
8	"Devilish iron horse" and "Aeolian harp": artistic responses to industrialization	Paper 1 due
9	Discussion
Week 6. Railroads and colonization
10	View film: The Iron Road. Directed by Neil Goodwin. PBS: The American experience, 1990, 60 min.	Final paper topic due
11	Discussion	Reading response paper due
Week 7. Making an agricultural landscape
12	View films: The Plow That Broke the Plains. Directed by Pare Lorentz, 1936, 25 min). (View and download at the Internet Archive.) The River. Directed by Pare Lorentz, 1938, 31 min. (View and download (Part 1, Part 2) at the Internet Archive.)
13	Discussion	Reading response paper due
Week 8. Technological systems and the transformation of time and space in the late nineteenth century
14	Networking nation and nature: a case study of weather telegraphy, 1870-1891
15	Discussion	Reading response paper due
Week 9. Creating American parklands
16	Conservation and the scientific management of nature	Paper 2 due
17	Discussion
Week 10. Water and the hydraulic society
18	View film Cadillac Desert. Directed by Jon Else and Linda Harrar, 1997, 60 min.
19	Discussion	Reading response paper due
Week 11. Labors of and in nature: rivers, energy, and work
20	Discussion
Week 12. The landscape of postwar suburbia
21	Levittown and the building of the suburban family ideal	Draft of final paper due
22	Discussion
Week 13. The landscape of food
23	How food became fast, or, industrial agriculture in the twentieth century
24	Discussion
Week 14. Presentations of student research projects
25	Student presentations
26	Student presentations (cont.)	Final paper due

Required Reading and Writing

The following books are required for the course. Additional articles and book excerpts will also be assigned and distributed.

Basso, Keith. Wisdom Sits in Places. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1996. ISBN: 9780826317247.

Cronon, William. Changes in the Land. New York, NY: Hill & Wang, 2003. ISBN: 9780809016341.

Solnit, Rebecca. River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and Technological Wild West. New York, NY: Penguin, 2004. ISBN: 9780142004104.

White, Richard. The Organic Machine. New York, NY: Hill & Wang, 1996. ISBN: 9780809015832.

Worster, Donald. Dust Bowl. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2004 [1979]. ISBN: 9780195174885.

Readings files.
LEC #	TOPICS	READINGS	STUDY QUESTIONS
Week 1. Introduction and problems of definition
1	Course overview and introductory lecture
2	Discussion: defining Technology and Nature	Williams, Raymond. "Ideas of Nature." In Problems in Materialism and Culture: Selected Essays. London, UK: Verso, 1996, pp. 67-85. ISBN: 9780860917298. Marx, Leo. "Technology: The Emergence of a Hazardous Concept." Social Research 64, no. 3 (Fall 1997): 965-988.
Week 2. Colonial American land use
3	A brief history of ecological change in North America in the eighteenth century	Cronon, pp. 3-107 and 159-170.
4	Discussion
Week 3. Places and how we know them
5	Discussion	Basso, pp. 3-104.
Week 4. Industrial America in the countryside
6	Imposing an industrial order on the antebellum landscape	Steinberg, Theodore. Nature Incorporated: Industrialization and the Waters of New England. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2004, pp. 1-75. ISBN: 9780521527118.
7	Discussion
Week 5. The aesthetics of the industrial landscape in antebellum America
8	"Devilish iron horse" and "Aeolian harp": artistic responses to industrialization	Thoreau, Henry David. "Where I Lived, and What I Lived For," "Sounds," "Solitude," "Spring," and "Conclusion." In Walden. 1854. (View text and download from The Thoreau Reader.) Marx, L. The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2000, pp. 242-265. ISBN: 9780195133516.
9	Discussion
Week 6. Railroads and colonization
10	View film: The Iron Road. Directed by Neil Goodwin. PBS: The American experience, 1990, 60 min.
11	Discussion	Stilgoe, John. Metropolitan Corridor: Railroads and the American Scene. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1985, pp. 189-221. ISBN: 9780300034813. Cronon, William. Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, 1992, pp. 55-93. ISBN: 9780393308730.
Week 7. Making an agricultural landscape
12	View films: The Plow That Broke the Plains. Directed by Pare Lorentz, 1936, 25 min. (View and download at the Internet Archive.) The River. Directed by Pare Lorentz, 1938, 31 min. (View and download (Part 1, Part 2) at the Internet Archive).	Cronon, William. Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, 1992, pp. 97-147. ISBN: 9780393308730. Steinberg, Theodore. Down to Earth: Nature's Role in American History. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2002, pp. 71-115. ISBN: 9780195140101.
13	Discussion
Week 8. Technological systems and the transformation of time and space in the late nineteenth century
14	Networking nation and nature: a case study of weather telegraphy, 1870-1891	Solnit, Rebecca. River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and Technological Wild West. New York, NY: Penguin, 2004. ISBN: 9780142004104.
15	Discussion
Week 9. Creating American parklands
16	Conservation and the scientific management of nature
17	Discussion	Pinchot, Gifford. "Prosperity," "The New Patriotism," and "The Present Battle." Chapters 1, 11 and 12 in The Fight for Conservation. New York, NY: Doubleday, Page & Co., 1910. # (Download complete work from Project Gutenberg.) Muir, John. "The Wild Parks and Forest Reservations of the West." Chapter 1 in Our National Parks. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin & Co., 1901, pp. 1-36. # (View and download the complete work from The Internet Archive.) Cronon, William. "The Trouble with Wilderness." In Uncommon Ground: Toward Reinventing Nature. Edited by William Cronon. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Co., 1995, pp. 69-90. ISBN: 9780393038729. Steinberg, Theodore. Down to Earth: Nature's Role in American History. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2002, pp. 138-56. ISBN: 9780195140101.
Week 10. Water and the hydraulic society
18	View film: Cadillac Desert. Directed by Jon Else and Linda Harrar, 1997, 60 min.	Worster, pp. 10-25 and 100-180.
19	Discussion
Week 11. Labors of and in nature: rivers, energy, and work
20	Discussion	White.
Week 12. The landscape of postwar suburbia
21	Levittown and the building of the suburban family ideal
22	Discussion	Selected primary sources from Nicolaides, Becky M., and Andrew Wiese, eds. The Suburb Reader. New York, NY: Routledge, 2006, pp. 260-272, 298, 303, and 316-320. ISBN: 9780415945936.
Week 13. The landscape of food
23	How food became fast, or, industrial agriculture in the twentieth century	Pollan, Michael. "Naturally: How Organic became a Marketing Niche and a Multibillion-dollar Industry." The New York Times Magazine, May 13, 2001, pp. 30-37, 57-58, and 63-64. Steinberg, Theodore. Down to Earth: Nature's Role in American History. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2002, pp. 138-56. ISBN: 9780195140101.
24	Discussion
Week 14. Presentations of student research projects
25	Student presentations
26	Student presentations (cont.)