for dianne concerning the landscape/environment of the south
Try Timothy Silver's A New Face on the Countryside. Its Cronon's Changes in the Land but for the South. Its also not as good.
Neil Maher
NYU
Timothy Silver's A New Face on the Countryside is superb -- does for the southeast what Bill Cronon did for New England.
Sources on this topic include:
David Allemendinger's bio. of Edmund Ruffin
Edward Linenthal's bk on battlefields in the South
Chas. Miller's bk on Jefferson and nature
and several articles by Jack Kirby, Joan Cashin, and Dell Upton
Hello,
I hope that I am doing this properly. I am responding to Dr. Glave's query about secondary sources on environmental history of the South.
To be honest there is not a lot out there that can be catagrorized as explicitly environmental history or landscape studies of the South. That said here is a short list off the top of my head: Albert Cowdrey's _Land's End_ is a study of the New Orleans district of the Corps of Engineers. Martin Reuss has a new book coming out soon on the Atchafalay spillway; and with that topic in mind you could also take a look at the first chapter of John McPhee's _The Control of Nature_. There are several studies on the TVA out there. Pare Lorentz's FSA financed film _The River_ might be viewed as either a primary or a secondary source, depending on the context in which it is to be used. There is of course a huge literature on cotton culture. Steven Hahn's _The Roots of Southern Populism_ might be called environmental history as well. There are an overwhelming number of books on flood control on the Mississippi; for the most part they are as dull as they are numerous. If you are interested in some of these titles feel free to contact me directly. Numerous books touch on the South's disease environments; the best may be a volume edited by Ronald Numbers and Todd Savitt called _Science and Medicine in the Old South_. There are several new studies of yellow fever in the South that might be useful; see for example Jo Ann Carrigan, _The Saffron Scourge_. Finally, before this list gets too out of control, if you are interested in landscape, Peirce Lewis's study of New Orleans, _Making an Urban Landscape_ is a must, and John Reps has a fairly new book called _Cities of the Mississippi_ that is worth a look.
Any and all of the above could be called environmental history -- I don't mean to get into questions of what exactly the discipline is -- depending on how you read or watch them. Few of them deal with landscape explicitly, but there are a huge number of primary sources, mostly travel narratives, that beautifully explore the southern landscape. If you are interested in these titles, please feel free to contact me. I am writing an environmental history of the city of New Orleans, and its relationship with the Mississippi river, thus I have a fairly good bibliography of travellers' accounts of the South.
I hope that this has been somewhat helpful.
Ari Kelman
Ph.D. Candidate
Brown University / Department of History
sherman@mailhost.tcs.tulane.edu
For a wonderful, disturbing, unforgettable novel about environmental and culture in Florida, how about Peter Matthiessen's -Killing Mr. Watson-?
Virginia Scharff
University of New Mexico
Hello,
I hope that I am doing this properly. I am responding to Dr. Glave's query about secondary sources on environmental history of the South.
To be honest there is not a lot out there that can be catagrorized as explicitly environmental history or landscape studies of the South. That said here is a short list off the top of my head: Albert Cowdrey's _Land's End_ is a study of the New Orleans district of the Corps of Engineers. Martin Reuss has a new book coming out soon on the Atchafalay spillway; and with that topic in mind you could also take a look at the first chapter of John McPhee's _The Control of Nature_. There are several studies on the TVA out there. Pare Lorentz's FSA financed film _The River_ might be viewed as either a primary or a secondary source, depending on the context in which it is to be used. There is of course a huge literature on cotton culture. Steven Hahn's _The Roots of Southern Populism_ might be called environmental history as well. There are an overwhelming number of books on flood control on the Mississippi; for the most part they are as dull as they are numerous. If you are interested in some of these titles feel free to contact me directly. Numerous books touch on the South's disease environments; the best may be a volume edited by Ronald Numbers and Todd Savitt called _Science and Medicine in the Old South_. There are several new studies of yellow fever in the South that might be useful; see for example Jo Ann Carrigan, _The Saffron Scourge_. Finally, before this list gets too out of control, if you are interested in landscape, Peirce Lewis's study of New Orleans, _Making an Urban Landscape_ is a must, and John Reps has a fairly new book called _Cities of the Mississippi_ that is worth a look.
Any and all of the above could be called environmental history -- I don't mean to get into questions of what exactly the discipline is -- depending on how you read or watch them. Few of them deal with landscape explicitly, but there are a huge number of primary sources, mostly travel narratives, that beautifully explore the southern landscape. If you are interested in these titles, please feel free to contact me. I am writing an environmental history of the city of New Orleans, and its relationship with the Mississippi river, thus I have a fairly good bibliography of travellers' accounts of the South.
I hope that this has been somewhat helpful.
Ari Kelman
Ph.D. Candidate
Brown University / Department of History
sherman@mailhost.tcs.tulane.edu
Dianne Glave wrote:
can anyone suggest some secondary sources which describe the environment/landscape of the the American South?
the first sources that come to mind are by albert cowdrey's this land, this south and mart stewart's upcoming publication.
Another very good book to consider is Timothy Silver's _A New Face on the Countryside: Indians, Colonists, and Slaves in South Atlantic Forests, 1500-1800_. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990. It is part of the Cambridge "Studies in Environment and History" series.
In the preface Silver acknowledges William Cronon's _Changes In the Land_ as his model for his dissertation that became this book.
Douglas Seefeldt
dougs@darkwing.uoregon.edu FORWARD IN ALL DIRECTIONS!
Dianne,
Check out the first chapter of Mary Thielgard Watts,
"Reading the Landscape."
Dick Heaberlin
English Department
Southwest Texas State University
I've done some work in historical geography on agriculture, environmental exploitation, and landscape change in the colonial Chesapeake, but have as yet had only one study published:
"Laws of Nature: Wildlife Management Legislation in Colonial Virginia," in _The American Environment: Interpretations of Past Geographies_, ed. Lary M. Dilsaver and Craig E. Colten (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1992), pp. 137-162.
If UMI has gotten around to it, my dissertation is available:
"'Alterations They Have Made at This Day': Environment, Agriculture, and Landscape Change in Essex County, Virginia, 1600-1782" (University of Maryland, College Park, 1995).
Two classic historical geographies of the Chesapeake include:
Carville V. Earle, _The Evolution of a Tidewater Settlement System:
All Hallow's Parish, Maryland, 1650-1783_, University of Chicago
Department of Geography Research Paper No. 170 (Chicago, IL:
Department of Geography, University of Chicago, 1975);
L. C. Gottschalk, "Effects of Soil Erosion on Navigation in the Upper Chesapeake Bay," _Geographical Review_ 31 (1945): 219-238;
For more possibilities, you might consult:
Michael P. Conzen, Thomas A. Rumney, and Graeme Wynn, eds., _A Scholar's Guide to Geographical Writing on the American and Canadian Past_, University of Chicago Geography Research Paper No. 235 (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1993).
I hope my few suggestions help.
Dr. David S. Hardin
Assistant Professor of Geography
Natural Sciences Department
Longwood College
Farmville, VA 23909
(804) 395-2581
dhardin@longwood.lwc.edu
Date sent: Thu, 22 Feb 1996 19:43:56 -0500
From: YosFalls@aol.com
Subject: Re: southern landscape
I think Cowdrey's work is the best I've read on the subject. Another book you might consider is Timothy Silver's "A New Face in the Countryside: Indians, Colonists, and Slaves in South Atlantic Forests, 1500-1800. A complete analysis of pocosins that includes a historical description of land use in eastern North Carolina is found in Pocosin Wetlands: An Integrated Analysis of Coastal Plain Freshwater Bogs in North Carolina. The book is edited by Carl Richardson.
From: "Cynthia Miller" <CMILLER@SOCIOLOGY.Lan.McGill.CA>
Organization: McGill University - Faculty of Arts
Date sent: Fri, 23 Feb 1996 09:38:47 EST5EDT
Subject: Re: southern landscape
For Dianne Glave:
A potentially interesting secondary source on southern landscape is Karl Heider's edited volume _Images of the South_. It's primarily ethnographic, but there are some essays that might be of use to you.
Best wishes,
Cynthia Miller
Cynthia J. Miller
Department of Anthropology
McGill University
Montreal, Quebec
cmiller@sociology.lan.mcgill.ca
Date sent: Mon, 26 Feb 1996 16:53:15 -0500 (EST)
From: Nils Sonntag sonntan@ucunix.san.uc.edu
Subject: Re: southern landscape
speaking of Albert Cowdrey: if I remember correctly "This Land, This South" (1983) is an environmental history of the South. another book that just came to my mind that certainly would be helpful is Michael Williams' "Americans and their Forests"
From: "KATHLEEN PAGAN"KATHLEEN@VIVALDI.emu.edu.tr
Organization: Eastern Mediterranean University
Date sent: Wed, 6 Mar 1996 12:05:27 EET +0200
Subject: Re: southern landscape
RE Southern Landscape
WYE ISLAND concerns the proposed development of Maryland's Eastern Shore by James Rouse. It examines the social and political environment as well as the natural. I cannot remember the author.
Another author who wrote a book about the construction of a federal road thru east Alabama in the last century is Dr. Jerry E. Brown, Auburn University. I cannot cite the title.
I just received a calendar of Florida images by photographer Clyde Butcher. Big Cypress Gallery in Florida is a good source for visual images of Florida.
Having been in N. Cyprus for 9 months I feel nostalgia for the "melancholy southern landscape" as William Styron describes.
GULE GULE (Turkish for Goodbye)
Kathleen Walston Pagan, AICP
Eastern Mediterranean University
*For identification only* 1996
kathleen@vivaldi.as.emu.edu.tr<$