ASI 320 – Perspectives on Cities:  Cities and Energy
A VTS Cluster offering in the History Domain

Class Meeting: MW 3-4:15 p.m., HM 118

Instructors:
Janet Bednarek, Department of History
John A. Heitmann, Department of History
John McCombe, Department of English
Robert Brecha, Department of Physics
Donald Chase, Department of Civil Engineering
Kevin Hallinan, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

Offices:
Dr. Heitmann -- 466 HM (x92803);
Dr. Bednarek – HM 464 (x92824)
Dr. McCombe – HM225 (x93697)
Dr. Brecha – SCI 5A (x92727)
Dr. Chase –  KL 422C (93847)
Dr. Hallinan –  KL361B (92835)

 

Office Hours:
For John Heitmann:11:00-11:50 MW or by appointment
            E-Mail: John.Heitmann@notes.udayton.edu
            Home page: http://homepages.udayton.edu/~heitmann/
For Janet Bednarek:  MW 1-2:45 or by appointment.
            Email:  janet.bednarek@notes.udayton.edu
Home page:  http://academic.udayton.edu/JanetBednarek

Texts: David E. Nye, Consuming Power:  A Social History of American Energies (2001).
Charles Dickens, Hard Times.
Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway.
There are also materials under Heitmann in E-Reserve
                                    

Grades: The final grade for this course will be based upon two Hour Exams, (40%), A Term Paper (20%), and Final Exam (20%), Occasional Reading Responses (20%). The grade scale is as follows: A  94 to 100; A-  90 to 93; B+  87-89; B 84-86; B-  80 - 83; C+ 77-79; C 74-76; C- 70-73.  A similar pattern applies to lower grades.  Letter grades are assigned a mid-point numerical grade. Additionally, attendance can influence your final grade: if you miss more than 3 classes, one letter grade will be deducted from your grade; if you miss more than 6 classes, a two letter grade reduction will take place.  A good grade for this course is a C+.  Grade averages may be influenced by such factors as trends over the time of the course; for example, how you finish is far more important than how you start. Policies for exams strictly follows History Department Guidelines, and make-ups will only be offered with a valid, documented excuse.

Term Papers:  A term paper assignment will be an important component of this course.  It should be 8 to 10 pages, doubled spaced, in length, and should employ MLA style citations.  It is not acceptable to hand in a paper that has been written for another course.  Key to the success of this project is that of topic choice.  A list of approved topics will be distributed on February 19; however, if you have your own idea for a paper topic, it can be pursued subject to faculty approval. We will have a term paper proposal assignment at mid-term that should help you with focus, themes, and sources.
           
Attendance at lectures is crucial if you are to expect a good grade in the course, and I want you to be at every class if that is at all possible. On many occasions material presented is not covered in the readings, and so many of the ideas discussed central to the development of modern science are complex and often confusing. Your attitude and what you bring in to the classroom can make the difference between a mediocre offering and a most positive educational experience. 
           
Cheating and plagiarism will not be tolerated and offenses will be punished accordingly. A first offense will result in a failing grade for the exam or paper in question; a second offense will result in a failing grade for the course. Penalties are subject to faculty discretion.  Further, it is totally unacceptable to hand in a paper that is the result of work in another class.

           
Course Purpose:  This course is one of five that are being developed and offered (Fall, 2006 – “Cities and Suburbs” was taught by a faculty team led by Dr. Pat Donnelly) that seeks to address a broad spectrum of issues that cities bring into focus.  An interdisciplinary team of faculty will delve into historical relationships, both idealized and real, between the country and the city.  Energy transitions over time will be examined that center on the changing reliance on human and animal power, water, fossil, and nuclear sources. We will look at the role of energy in each environment and particularly at the growth of cities since the Industrial Revolution, their dependence on an unprecedented abundance of energy, a wide range of positive and negative effects of this phenomenon, and how an inevitable change in energy resources may affect human life in a future that is increasingly focused in cities.  Currently there is no more important issue than that of our dependence on non-renewable sources of energy.

SCHEDULE OF LECTURES AND ASSIGNMENTS

The week of:

Week 1/January 3        Introduction of Faculty and a Description of what Each of Us Will Bring to the Course
                                                                  
Week 2/January 8/10 What is a City? (Bednarek)  What is Energy?   (Hallinan)
                                                           
Readings:  Janet Bednarek, “What is a City?”  Howard T. Odum and Elisabeth C. Odum, Energy: Basis for Man and Nature (McGraw Hill, 1976), Introduction; Chapter 1 (Systems of Energy Flows); Chapter 2 (AWhat is Energy?); Chapter 3, (Principles of Energy Flows)  John R. Fanchi, Energy in the 21st Century (World Scientific, 2005), Chapter 1 (Brief History of Energy Consumption).
                                                           
                       
January 15                              Martin Luther King Day

Week 3/January 17                    Energies of Conquest (Heitmann)
           
Reading: David E. Nye, Consuming Power: A Social History of American Energies, Chapter 1 (Energies of Conquest).

 

Week 4/January 22/24               The City, the Countryside, and the Industrial Revolution (Heitmann and Bednarek)
           
Reading: Nye, Chapter 2 (Water and Industry);  Chapter 3 (Cities of Steam); Chapter 4 (Power Incorporated);

           

Week 5/January 29/31 Poetic Response to the 19th Century City (McCombe)
           
Readings:  For January 29:  Wordsworth’s “Preface to Lyrical Ballads”; Selected poems by Wordsworth, including “Simon Lee,” “Lines Written in Early Spring,” “Expostulation and Reply,” and “The Tables Turned.” For January 31: “Wordsworth’s “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey,” and “Sonnet Composed upon Westminster Bridge.”  Also Samuel Taylor Colleridge’s “This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison,” and “Frost at Midnight.”  All on E-Reserve.

           

Week 6/ February 5/7              The Victorian Novel:  Cities and the Human Imagination” (McCombe)
                                                           
Readings:  Charles Dickens, Hard Times.  For Feb. 5 Books 1 and 2; For Feb. 7 Book 3

                                                           
Week 7/ February 12                 Gilded Age Cities (Bednarek)
           
Readings: Nye, Chapter 5 (Industrial Systems).
           

            Exam 1 on Valentine’s Day:  The Valentine’s Day Massacre?        

 

Week 8/February 19/21 Cities, Infrastructure. Sewers, Water Supplies, Bacteriology (Chase and Heitmann)
                                                           
Reading:   Martin Melosi, The Sanitary City: Urban Infrastructure in America from Colonial Times to the Present (Baltimore, 200), Chapters 4-7 (Pure and Plentiful: From Protosystems to Modern Waterworks, 1830-1880; Subterranean Networks: Wastewater Systems as Works in Progress; On the Cusp of New Public Health: Bacteriology, Environmental Sanitation, and the Quest for Permanence, 1880-1920; Water Supply As a Municipal Enterprise, 1880-1920.)

 

Week 9/ February 26/28          Cities in the Progressive Era (Bednarek)

Readings: Nye, Chapter 6 (Consumption and Dispersion); Mark Rose and John G. Clark, "Light, Heat, and Power: Energy Choices in Kansas City, Wichita, and Denver, 1900-1935," Journal of Urban History 5 (May, 1979), 340-364; Harold L. Platt, "City Lights: The Electrification of the Chicago Region, 1880-1930," in Joel A. Tarr and Gabriel DuPuy, eds., Technology and the Rise of the Networked City in Europe and America (Philadelphia), 246-281.
           
           

Week 10/ March 5/7                  The Rise of the Petroleum Economy (Brecha); The City and the Automobile (Heitmann)
                                                             
Readings: Kenneth Jackson,      Crabgrass Frontier:  the Suburbanization of the United States (New York, 1985), pp.157-171; “Fossil-Fueled Civilization,” in Vaclav Smil, Energy in World History, Chapter 5, pp. 157-222.

 

March 12/14 – Mid Term Break!!!!

 

Week 11/ March 19                 The City and Everyday Life (Bednarek)
                                                           
Readings: Jean Christie, “Morris L. Cooke and Energy for America,” in Carroll W. Pursell, Jr., Technology in America, 2nd edition, pp.237-247.
           

 

Week 11/12/ March 21/26       Women in the Metropolis Between the Wars (McCombe)

Readings: Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway .  For March 21, pp. 3-70; For March 26, pp. 70-194.

 

March 28 – Test 2

           

Week 13/ April 3/5                    Nuclear Power and the City (Bednarek, Heitmann, Brecha)
                                                           
Readings:  Colin J. Campbell and Jean H. LaHerrere, “The End of Cheap Oil;”  “Nuclear Reactors”  (both on E-reserve); http://www.colorado.edu/physics/2000/isotopes/index.html.

           
            Easter Recess Holiday April 9

 

Week 14/ April 11       Post-War Urban History/Suburbanization (Bednarek)
                                                           
Reading:  Nye, Chapter 7, (The High Energy Economy); Mark Foster, "The Automobile and the City," in David L. Lewis and Laurence Goldstein, eds., The Automobile and American Culture (Ann Arbor, 1980), 24-36; Raymond Arsenault, "The End of the Long Hot Summer: the Air Conditioner and Southern Culture," The Journal of Southern History, 50 (November 1984), 597-628:  Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier, pp.246-271.
           
            Stander Symposium April 18

 

Week 15/ April 16                     Oil Shock Global Warming and Energy Crisis (Brecha and Hallinan)
                                               
Reading:  Nye, Chapter 8 (Energy Crisis and Transition), Chapter 9 (Choices).

 

Week 16/April 23/25                  Creating a Green City (All)

Reading: Howard T. Odum and Elisabeth C. Odum, “The Prosperous Way Down,” Energy, 31 (206), 21-32; Jonas Åkerman and Mattias Höjer, “How Much Transport Can the Climate Stand?  -- Sweden on a Sustainable Path in 2050,”  Energy Policy, 34 (2006), 1944-1957.

 

            April 23— Term Paper is due
           
            April 25 --  Last Day of Classes
            Final Exam is May 3, 10:10 a.m. to 12:00