ENGLISH 841: VISIONS OF SUSTAINABILITY:
Dr. David S. Shields, McClintock Professor of Southern Letters Welsh 207
Wednesday 5:30-8:00 Humanities 308.
The dominant form of utopian aspiration in the West in the past twenty years has
proceeded from a desire for sustainability—the enduring maintenance of resources,
economic opportunities, and cultural values. This seminar—reflecting the campuswide concern for “Environment and Sustainability”—explores the intellectual
history and literary figurations of sustainability in western writing from Malthus to
current theorists of sustainable agriculture, such as Miguel Altieri and Gordon
Conway. The particular focus of this seminar will be food and agriculture, treating
particularly attempts to imagine the right way to make use of nature’s bounty, order
agriculture, and prepare food for people. Authors included: Wendell Berry, Rachel
Carson, Aldo Leopold, James Madison, David W. Pierce, Michael Pollan, and Kenneth
Kiple.
Class Policies & Writing Assignments will be discussed in a separate
document. You will notice, however, that a student delivered book report will
be a feature of each class session.
Required Texts:--I have chosen not to use the campus bookstore for texts this
year because kindle and editions of books afford students ample savings. You
may buy from any vendor you wish. For the sake of convenience I have linked
to AmazonWendell Berry, Bringing it to the Table: On Farming and Food
http://www.amazon.com/Bringing-It-Table-FarmingFood/dp/158243543X/ref=pd_sim_b_16
Miguel Altieri: Genetic Engineering in Agriculture
http://www.amazon.com/Genetic-Engineering-Agriculture-EnvironmentalAlternatives/dp/0935028935/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1340823150&sr
=1-4&keywords=miguel+altieri
Michael Pollan: In Defense of Food
http://www.amazon.com/In-Defense-Food-EatersManifesto/dp/0143114964/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1340823822&sr=81&keywords=michael+pollan
Pierre Desroucher & Hiroko Shimizu: The Locavore’s Dilemma
http://www.amazon.com/The-Locavores-Dilemma-Praise-000mile/dp/1586489402/ref=sr_1_42?ie=UTF8&qid=1340824378&sr=842&keywords=sustainability+food
SCHEDULE OF SESSION TOPICS
August 29: Introduction. Sustainability as a concept in reaction to dystopia
visions of economy and politics. Sustainability as a utopian aspiration, a collection
of best practices. The first articulation of the ideal of sustainability in the World
Council of Churches 1974 Conference "Science and Technology for Human
Development, The Ambiguous Future -- The Christian Hope"
Work in a Sustainable Society:
http://www.jaysquare.com/resources/workdocs/work06a.htm
September 5: A History of Catastrophes: Malthus & the runaway population.
Read Chapters 1, 2, 17-19 of “An Essay on the Principle of Population”
http://129.237.201.53/books/malthus/population/malthus.pdf
Book Report: Mary Shelley, The Last Man.
The American Soil crisis: James Madison, Address to the Agricultural Society of
Albemarle Virginia (pp. 63-92) William Rives, Letters of James Madison:
http://books.google.com/books?id=I6tLmjLqRfAC
September 12: Faith in the machine. Thomas Carlyle “The Mechanical Age”
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/carlyle-times.asp
Andrew Ure: “The Philosophy of the Manufacturers”
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1835ure.asp
Book Report: Andrew Carnegie, The Gospel of Wealth
John M. Sherwood “Engels, Marx, Malthus, and the Machine,” The American
Historical Review 1985—available on campus via library electronic subscription
http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/1858842?uid=3739896
September 19: The Threat to the Wild. John Muir and Preservation:
Book Report: John Muir & the Mountains of Califoria
John Muir, Our National Parks, Chapters 1 & 10:
http://books.google.com/books?id=NgcNAAAAIAAJ
Gifford Pinchot & Conservationism. Pinchot: The Fight for Conservation:
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/11238/11238-h/11238-h.htm
Choose from either chapter 6, 7, or 8
September 26: The Emergence of Ecology. Book Report: Also Leopold, A Sand
County Almanac. E. P. Odum, The Emergence of Ecology as a New Integrative
Discipline, Science 25, (March 1977).
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/195/4284/1289.full.pdf
Tansley & the idea of Ecosystem—William S. Currie, “Units of Nature or Processes
across scales? The ecosystem concept at age 75” New Phytologist 190, 1 (April
2011): http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1469-8137.2011.03646.x/full
October 3: Rachel Carson, the Prophet. Book Report: Silent Spring.
Bill Moyer’s Journal: Rachel Carson’s Legacy, a Play:
http://video.pbs.org/video/1442629512/ . “Rachel Carson and the Awakening
Environmental Consciousness.
http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/tserve/nattrans/ntwilderness/essays/carson.
htm The enduring counter-attack: J. G. Edwards, “The Lies of Rachel Carson”
http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/articles/summ02/Carson.html
October 10 Wendell Berry and the Critique of Industrial Agriculture:
Book Report: The Mad Farmer Poems. Bringing it to the Table [required text
book—purchase link found above] Part 1. Part III “The Pleasures of Eating”
October 17: The World Conservation Strategy 1980 & the emergence of the
ideal of “sustainable development.” The global economic context.
http://data.iucn.org/dbtw-wpd/edocs/WCS-004.pdf
Book Report: Gioconda Belli, Waslala [in Spanish]
October 24: Green Revolution & Plant Breeding. “The Green Revolution-video
overview” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HucSCNQ01X4
A dissenting view: Miguel Altieri, Genetic Engineering in Agriculture [required
Textbook. Link for purchase above.”
Book Report: John H. Perkins, Geopolitics and the Green Revolution.
October 31: Industrial Agriculture & Global Food Systems. “Monsanto—A
Sustainable Agricultural Company” The Feed the Future Initiative:
http://www.monsanto.com/newsviews/Pages/Feed-the-Future-Initiative.aspx
Agriculture & the Hungry Thirsy Needy Puzzle
http://www.monsanto.com/newsviews/Pages/Agriculture-Hungry-Thirsty-NeedyPuzzle.aspx
Beyond Food & Fuel—The Role of 21st Century Agriculture
http://www.monsanto.com/newsviews/Pages/21st-Century-Agriculture-BeyondFood-and-Fuel.aspx
Book Report: Peter Pringle, Food, Inc. Mendel to Monsanto
November 7: The Locavore Movement and the Critique of Big Food.
Michael Pollan: In Defense of Food [required text linked above]
Book Report: Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Vegetable, Miracle
Book Report: Book Report, Gary Nabhan, Coming Home to Eat, The Pleasures and
Politics of Local Foods, 2001
November 14: Global versus local: Pierre Desroucher & Hiroko Shimizu: The
Locavore’s Dilemma [required text, purchase link noted above.
Book Report: Kenneth F. Kiple: Feast, Ten Centuries of Food Globalization
November 28 Green Economy: Book Report: David Pierce, The Blueprint for a
Green Economy. World Conservation Union, “The Economic Value of Biodiversity,”
http://www.cbd.int/doc/external/iucn/iucn-biodiversity-value-1994-en.pdf
Exploring the Global Green Economy: Climate, Governance, efficiency:
http://www.unep.org/greeneconomy/
December 5: Exploring the U. S. Governmental Visions of Sustainability.
1. The Environmental Protection Agency
http://epa.gov/sustainability/index.htm
2. The U. S. Department of Agriculture
http://afsic.nal.usda.gov/sustainability-agriculture-0