Readings

ses # TOPICS READINGS
1 Introduction

Film:

Williams, Raymond. The Country and the City: A Film with Raymond Williams. 1979.

2 Geography and Destiny

Buy at Amazon Scott, James. Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999. ISBN: 9780300078152.

Buy at Amazon Fitzgerald, Deborah. "Technology and Agriculture in 20th Century America." In A Companion to American Technology. Edited by Carroll Pursell. Oxford: Blackwell, in press, 2005. ISBN: 9780631228448.

Buy at Amazon Turner, Frederick Jackson. "The Significance of the Frontier in American History." New York, NY: Dover Publications, 1996. ISBN: 9780486291673.

Buy at Amazon Hofstadter, Richard. "The Agrarian Myth and Commercial Realities." In The Age of Reform . New York, NY: Vintage, 1960. ISBN: 9780394700953.

3 Plants and Animals

Buy at Amazon Pollan, Michael. The Botany of Desire: A Plant's Eye View of the World. New York, NY: Random House, 2002. ISBN: 9780375760396.

Buy at Amazon Schrepfer, Susan, and Philip Scranton, eds. Industrializing Organisms: Introducing Evolutionary History. New York, NY: Routledge, 2003. ISBN: 9780415945486.

4 Land and Water

Buy at Amazon Worster, Donald. Rivers of Empire: Water, Aridity, and the Growth of the American West. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1987. ISBN: 9780394751610.

Buy at Amazon ———. Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2004. ISBN: 9780195174885.

Buy at Amazon Fiege, Mark. Irrigated Eden: The Making of an Agricultural Landscape in the American West. Seattle WA: University of Washington Press, 2000. ISBN: 9780295980133.

Buy at Amazon Stoll, Steven. Larding the Lean Earth: Soil and Society in Nineteenth-Century America. New York, NY: Hill and Wang, 2002. ISBN: 9780809064311.

Films:

Lorentz, Pare. The Plow That Broke the Plains. Directed by Pare Lorentz. 25 min. Resettlement Administration (A U.S. Documentary Film), 1936. Videocassette.

———. The River. Directed by Pare Lorentz. 31 min. Farm Security Administration (A U.S. Documentary Film), 1938. Videocassette.

5 Colonial Concerns

Buy at Amazon Vickers, Daniel. Farmers and Fishermen: Two Centuries of Work in Essex County, Massachusetts, 1630-1850. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1994. ISBN: 9780807844588.

Buy at Amazon Cronon, William. Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England. Revised ed. New York, NY: Hill and Wang, 2003. ISBN: 9780809016341.

Buy at Amazon Kulikoff, Allan. From British Peasants to Colonial American Farmers. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2000. ISBN: 9780807848821.

6 Hunters and Prey

Buy at Amazon Warren, Louis. The Hunter's Game: Poachers and Conservationists in 20th Century America. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999. ISBN: 9780300080865.

Jacoby, Karl. Crimes Against Nature: Squatters, Poachers, Thieves, and the Hidden History of American Conservation. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2003. ISBN: 0520239091.

McEvoy, Arthur. The Fisherman's Problem: Ecology and Law in the California Fisheries, 1850-1980. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1986. ISBN: 0521385865.

7 The South and Slavery

Berlin, Ira. Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998. ISBN: 0674810929.

Daniel, Pete. Breaking the Land: The Transformation of Cotton, Tobacco, and Rice Cultures Since 1880. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1985. ISBN: 0252011473.

Foley, Neil. The White Scourge: Mexicans, Blacks, and Poor Whites in Texas Cotton Culture. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1997. ISBN: 0520207246.

Wilkinson, Alec. Big Sugar: Seasons in the Cane Fields of Florida. New York, NY: Knopf, 1989. ISBN: 0679731873.

8 Production and Consumption

Buy at Amazon Neth, Mary. Preserving the Family Farm: Women, Community, and the Foundations of Agribusiness in the Midwest, 1900-1940. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998. ISBN: 9780801860614.

Buy at Amazon Kline, Ron. Consumers in the Country: Technology and Social Change in Rural America. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002. ISBN: 9780801871153.

Danbom, David. Born in the Country: A History of Rural America. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995. ISBN: 0801850401.

Buy at Amazon Barron, Hal. Mixed Harvest: The Second Great Transformation in the Rural North, 1870-1930. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1997. ISBN: 9780807846599.

9 Labor and Management

Buy at Amazon Agee, James, and Walker Evans. Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 2001. ISBN: 9780618127498.

Buy at Amazon McWilliams, Cary. Factories in the Field: The Story of Migratory Farm Labor in California . Waltham, MA: Peregrine Publishers, 1971. ISBN: 9780879050054.

Buy at Amazon Goldschmidt, Walter. As You Sow. New York, NY: Harcourt Brace, 1978. ISBN: 9780916672119.

Buy at Amazon Hahamovitch, Cindy. The Fruits of Their Labor: Atlantic Coast Farmworkers and the Making of Migrant Poverty, 1870-1945. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1997. ISBN: 9780807846391.

10 Modernity and Its Discontents

Buy at Amazon Fitzgerald, Deborah. Every Farm a Factory: The Industrial Ideal in American Agriculture. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003. ISBN: 9780300088137.

Buy at Amazon Stoll, Steven. The Fruits of Natural Advantage: Making the Industrial Countryside in California. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1998. ISBN: 9780520211728.

Buy at Amazon Vaught, David. Cultivating California: Growers, Specialty Crops, and Labor, 1875-1920. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002. ISBN: 9780801871122.

Tobey, Ron, and Charles Weatherell. "The Citrus Industry and the Revolution of Corporate Capitalism in Southern California, 1887-1944." California History 74 (1995): 6-21.

11 The Farm Crisis and Agricultural Policy

Buy at Amazon Dudley, Kathryn. Debt and Dispossession: Farm Loss in America's Heartland. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2000. ISBN: 9780226169118.

Buy at Amazon Barlett, Peggy. American Dreams, Rural Realities: Family Farms in Crisis. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1993. ISBN: 9780807843994.

Buy at Amazon Cochrane, Willard. Development of American Agriculture: A Historical Analysis. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1979. ISBN: 9780816609260.

Buy at Amazon Busch, Lawrence, William Lacy, Jeffrey Bukhardt, and Laura Lacy. Plants, Power and Profit: Social, Economic, and Ethical Consequences of the New Plant Biotechnology. Cambridge: Blackwell, 1991. ISBN: 9781557860880.

Film:

Ascher, Steven and Jeanne Jordan (dir.) Troublesome Creek: A Midwestern. Written by Steven Ascher and Jeanne Jordan.  Produced by Steven Ascher.  88 min., 1995.

12 Student Presentations