HISTORY 291
SURVEY OF AMERICAN ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY
Syllabus & Course Calendar
Instructor David Brooks,
University of Montana, Spring 2009
Course Description and Objectives
This course is a broad-ranging and deep-time historical survey of the relationships
between people and the environment in the United States. We will begin with an
introduction to the geological formation of the continent, the peopling of North America,
and major topics regarding the environmental history of American Indians. We will go
on to investigate a variety of topics, from Euroamerican philosophies about, and
utilization of, the non-human world, through the emergence of environmentalism as a
powerful contemporary social movement. Our overarching course objective is to gain an
appreciation for a more expansive kind of history than that centered on wars, politics, and
more traditional topics of historical study. We will also track how and why some
environmental practices and ideas have been sustainable and others have not over
throughout time and across cultures in North America. Our specific course objectives are
as follows:
1. To understand the major themes and topics in American Environmental History,
including environmental philosophies, economic utilization of the environment,
environmental laws, social movements, and leading personalities in
environmental thought and action.
2. To expand your intellectual horizons through lecture material, reading and,
perhaps most importantly, through a focus on improving your ability to
communicate verbally and in writing.
3. To develop critical thinking skills with a particular focus on analyzing how the
relationships between people and the environment in North America have, or have
not, been sustainable over time. As with all history, this means assessing the past
with a focus on what has changed and what has remained the same.
Readings
You will read four books. Three of these are assigned texts: Louis Warren’s edited
anthology, American Environmental History, Hal Rothman’s The Greening of a Nation,
and Dan Flores’s The Natural West: Environmental History in the Great Plains and
Rocky Mountains. The course calendar includes a specific reading schedule. You are
responsible for keeping up with this schedule for class discussions and exam questions
based on the readings. You will choose the fourth book from the course bibliography and
it will be the subject of your book review.
Assignments
Again, you are responsible for keeping up with the assigned reading. Each week, you
will use Blackboard to post a short, thoughtful response to one of the week’s readings. In
addition, you will offer comments to responses of at least two of your classmates. (In
class, I will elaborate on using Blackboard and this assignment.) In addition you will
write two papers. The first will be a 3-5 page book review worth 15 points. You will
also write a longer paper. You have three options for this assignment. First, you may
write an 8-10 page bioregional history of any place you choose. We will use essays in
Flores’s The Natural West as models for this medium-length essay. Alternately, you may
collaborate with a fellow student to write a longer, 15-18 page, more in-depth bioregional
history. Third, you may do ten hours of volunteer work for a local restoration project and
write a 3-5 page description of the project, including a brief history of what happened that
warranted restoration, and what elements of the past environment the project intends to
restore. For this, you will also have to provide documentation of your volunteer hours.
Each of these assignments will be worth 25 points per student.
There will be two major exams in this course, a midterm and a final. The format of these
will be essay and short answer, and each will be worth 30 points towards the course total
of 100. Final grades will be based on point totals out of a possible 100 using the standard
90% = A;…60% = D, etc. I will give makeup exams under special (unavoidable and
excused) circumstances, but I discourage them; they're a lot of additional trouble and
grades tend to be lower on makeups, so please try to make the exams as scheduled.
The classroom approach I use in this course is daily lecture and free discussion. Slides,
videos, music, guest speakers and handouts will be regular features of History 291.
My office is #352 in Corbin Hall, my office hours this semester are 2-4 p.m. T/Th, or by
appointment.
I'll make arrangements for students with documented special learning needs if they see
me with their requirements. March 9 is the last day for drop/add and a change of grading
option. Students who take this class P/F need to note that a letter grade of "C" is the
minimum for a P.
COURSE CALENDAR
Topics, Reading, and Assignments
January 29 __ Longue duree continental history & ecology
February 3 -- ditto Flores, Intro & 1
5 -- Native North America Warren, 1
10 __ ditto Flores, 3
12 – Old World antecedents: Thought Warren, 2
17 – Old World antecedents: History Flores, 4
19 – No class (But read Warren, 3)
24 __ The Great Frontier Warren, 4
26 – Early American natural history highlights Warren, 5, Flores, 2
March 3 – MIDTERM: lectures, Warren, 1-5, Flores, Intro,1-4
5 – Film, American Experience: Muir and Pinchot
10 – The Romantic Cult of Nature Warren, 6
WILDCARD BOOK REVIEW DUE
12 – When Nature Became High Art
17 -- The West and Environmental History; Warren, 7, Flores 5-6
19 – American Progressive Conservation
24 – Ditto Flores, 7-8;
26 – The parks and ecology movements Warren, 8
April 7 ditto Flores, 9, Rothman, 1
9 -- The New Deal, the Dust Bowl, and the 1950s
14 ditto Warren, 9, Rothman, 2-3
16 -- Environmentalism emerges Warren, 10-11, Rothman, 4
21 -- ditto; BIOREGIONAL PAPER DUE
23 -- The Environmental "New Deal" . . .
28 – . . . and Backlash; Warren, 12, Rothman, 5-6
30 -_ America in a changing world: “What is the future of Environmentalism?” Warren,
13, Flores, 10
May 5 – ditto Rothman, 7-8
7 – Review
13 –- FINAL EXAM, 1:10 - 3:10; lectures,
Warren 6-13; Flores 5-10; Rothman
Contract Agreement:
Finally, this syllabus is a contract. By giving it to you I agree to uphold the course
objectives, deliver the course content, and evaluate the assignments as they are described
above. By returning a signed copy of this syllabus to me, you will indicate that you have
read and understand those course objectives, the readings, the outline of content, and the
assignments that this course requires. If you have any questions about anything on this
syllabus, please ask me to clarify or elaborate.
X______________________________________ Date:________________________