Readings | Technology and Nature in American History | Science, Technology, and Society

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.	(PDF)
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.	(PDF)
4	Discussion
Week 3. Places and how we know them
5	Discussion	Basso, pp. 3-104.	(PDF)
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.	(PDF)
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		(PDF)
Week 6. Railroads and colonization
10	View film: The Iron Road. Directed by Neil Goodwin. PBS: The American experience, 1990, 60 min.		(PDF)
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.	(PDF)
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. (PDF) (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. (PDF - 4.3 MB) (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.	(PDF)
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.	(PDF)
19	Discussion
Week 11. Labors of and in nature: rivers, energy, and work
20	Discussion	White.	(PDF)
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.)