[From the editor: Doug Sackman has contributed a syllabus on the environmental/cultural history of California and the West. We have only had a couple submissions so far and would appreciate anything list members might have to offer.]

History 144G
Nature in California & the American West: A Cultural History, 1893 to the Present.

[taught at UC Irvine, Summer and Fall 1995]

Instructor: Doug Sackman

• Course Description: Nature in America has long been considered a hostile obstacle to culture, particular in the 19th century narrative that has come to be called "the myth of the frontier." According to this story, "culture" overcomes "nature" to prove its superiority and to progress or grow-economically, geographically, and even spiritually. This view has played an especially important role in the stories and the histories that have been told about the "winning of the West." But this story about nature and culture began to undergo important changes a century ago, when Frederick Jackson Turner announced the "closing of the frontier." Its vanishing ushered in a profound cultural crisis: could America still "grow" if it didn't have a wilderness to conquer and progress through? New and distinctly modern questions arose about the relationship between nature and culture. In the context of the technological and capitalistic transformation of the West, new modes of perceiving nature emerged. In California, at places like Yosemite, the Owens Valley, Diablo Canyon, the orange groves of Southern California and the laboratories of the biotech firm Calgene, some of these new views of nature were developed and contested.

In this course, we will examine the ideas, institutions and practices that have made nature what it is today in California and the American West. We begin by considering and interrogating the assumption that "culture"-through literature, images and other forms of representation-constructs "nature" in real and significant ways. Students will have an opportunity to develop their own critical understanding of how cultural representations of nature relate to the economic and ecological dimensions of the West's modern transformation. Important literary interpreters of the Western and California landscape-Norris, Muir, Austin, Steinbeck, Silko, Snyder-will be read in the context of new interpretations of this same terrain written by environmental historians. Students will write 5 short (2 pg.) papers and one research essay (8-10 pgs.) exploring the relationship between literary representation and historical reality in constituting the "culture of nature" and the "nature of culture" in California and the American West.

• Required Texts: William Cronon, Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West Michael Smith, Pacific Visions: California Scientists and the Environment Donald Worster, Rivers of Empire: Water, Aridity, and the Growth of the American West Frank Norris The Octopus John Muir The Yosemite Mary Austin The Land of Little Rain John Steinbeck The Grapes of Wrath Leslie Marmon Silko Ceremony Gary Snyder, The Practice of the Wild Photocopied Readings Available at the Reserve Room (Now across from the Main Library in the Commons)
• Course Requirements:
  1. Reading of all assignments, Attendance & Participation, including some informal writing assignments (10%); 2) One short class presentation (10%); Five 2-page essays responding to a question concerning course readings (40%), 3) an 8-10-page research essay (40%)
• Lectures & Reading Assignments Part I (weeks 1-3) Nature, Culture and the Frontier in the Age of Industrialization Week 1: Orienteering the Field: Environmental History, The West and Modern America Tu (9/26): Introduction: Grizzly Facts & Environmental History Th (9/28): Lecture: Chicago 1893: The Birth of Modern America
• Raymond Williams, "Culture" and "Nature" (In Folder available in Reserve Room)
• William Cronon Nature's Metropolis, preface; 1-93
• Frederick Jackson Turner, "The Significance of the Frontier in American History" (In Folder)

Week 2: Ideas of Progress in the West
Tu (10/3): Discussion: Turner, Cronon, Williams

• finish Turner, Cronon & Williams First Paper Due Th (10/5): Lecture: Landscapes of Abundance, Progress & Loss: Images of Nature & Technology in 19th Century America
• William Cronon, Nature's Metropolis, pp. 97-147; 310-385
• Frank Norris The Octopus (Begin)

Week 3: The Intersection of Human and Natural Economies: Transforming Nature into Commodities
Tu (10/10): Lecture: Scale, Scope & Culture: Indians, Fishing and Capitalist Transformation
Th (10/12): Discussion: Norris & Cronon Second Paper Due

• finish Norris Part II (weeks 4 & 5): Yosemite, Nature Writing, Science, Gender and the Birth of Environmentalism Week 4: The Rationalization of Nature versus the Re-mystification/masculanization of Nature Tu (10/17): Back to Nature: Environmental Ideas & Politics in the Progressive Era Film: The Wilderness Idea Th (10/19: Discussion: Smith, Haraway, Muir
• Michael Smith, Pacific Visions: California Scientists and the Environment, 1-103; 143-198
• Donna Haraway, "Teddy Bear Patriarchy" (In Folder)
• John Muir, The Yosemite

Week 5: Women, Nature and Ecology: "Home Economics" as Metaphor for Management/Preservation
Tu (10/24): Lecture: Progress, Abundance and Loss, Take 2: The Gendered Landscape
Th (10/26): Discussion: Smith, Austin, Muir, Merchant

• Mary Austin The Land of Little Rain
• Carolyn Merchant "Women of the Progressive Conservation Movement" (In folder) Third Paper Due

Part III (Weeks 6-8): Land, Water, Agribusiness and the Emergence of a "Social Ecology" in the Depression

Week 6: The Culture (and Nature) of Consumption, the Dust Bowl and the New Deal Response
Tu (10/31): Lecture: The Pastoral Idyll, Agribusiness and Sunkist: Reinventing Nature for Consumer Culture Th (11/2): Dust Bowl, Depression and the Erosion of Nature and Culture: Films: Pare Lorentz, The Plow that Broke the Plains (1936);The River (1937) H.P. McClure, The New Frontier (1934)

• Donald Worster, Rivers of Empire, 1-21; 191-256; 309-335; (recommended: 22-60; 257-308)
• William Cronon, "A Place for Stories" (In Folder)
• John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath (Begin)

Week 7: Re-Visions of the relationships among land, technology, nature and justice
Tu (11/7): Film: King Vidor, Our Daily Bread (1934) Th (11/9): Discussion: Worster, Cronon, Vidor

• Finish Worster & Cronon; continue Steinbeck

Week 8: Social Ecology in the Cultural Politics of the Depression Tu (11/14): Lecture: Documentary Expression and the Erosion of Nature and Culture
Th (11/16): Discussion: Steinbeck

• finish Steinbeck Fourth Paper Due

Part IV (Weeks 9 & 10): Modern Fallout: New Dangers & the Emergence of New Environmental Movements & Ideas

Week 9: Technology, Race, Environmental Justice and Alternative views of Nature
Tu (11/21): Lecture: The Petro-Chemic-Atomic West: Bombs, Reactors, Dams, DDT and a New Day for the Earth

• Leslie Marmon Silko, Ceremony
• Selections from Rebecca Solnit, Savage Dreams: A Journey into the Hidden Wars of the American West (In Folder 3-11; 19; 28-31; 38-40; 43-47; 55-60; 73-74; 77-82; 96-103; 112-120; 134-144; 163-169; 185-189) Th (11/23): Thanksgiving Holiday

Week 10: Crossing the Next Meridian: Reinventing and/or Reinhabiting Nature Tu (11/28): Discussion: Silko, Solnit, White Possible Film "The Navajo Weaver"

• Finish Silko and Solnit Th (12/1): Discussion: Snyder, Haraway, Rabinow
• Gary Snyder, The Practice of the Wild, 3-47; 78-96; 116-143; 175-185
• Langdon Winner, "The Whale and the Reactor" 26-27; 164-178 (In Folder)
• Donna Haraway "The Promise of Monsters" (In Folder)
• Paul Rabinow "Artificiality and Enlightenment: From Sociobiology to Biosociology" (In Folder) (Recommended: Max Oelshlaeger The Idea of Wilderness "Contemporary Wilderness Philosophy" 281-319; book on reserve) Fifth Paper Due

FINALS WEEK
Th (12/8) : Research Essay Due

• Class Presentations: Below is a list of subjects-persons, wildlife, laws, events, etc.-which are in some way important to the environmental history of the American West. You can choose a subject from this list for your class presentations. Presentations should be approximately five minutes long. It is up to you to decide what about the subject would be interesting for us to hear about, in the context of this course (the main theme of which, keep in mind, is the relationship between culture and nature).

There is no set format for the presentations. You will need to do some library research, locating one or two sources of information; please feel free to ask me for suggestions for sources. You must sign up for a presentation by Thursday of the first week. You may wish to present on a topic that is not listed below: if so, please speak with me after class on Thursday so we can decide on which day it would be appropriate to make the presentation. It may happen that you wish to write your research on some issue that involves the subject of your class presentation; in other words, your research paper can grow out of your presentation.

Possible Topics include:

John Wesley Powell
The Donner Party
Lewis & Clark
Buffalo (Bison)/Buffalo Bill
California Indians and their Creation Myths Charles Lummis (California Booster)
Charles Nordhoff (California Booster)
Giant Sequoia or "Big Trees"
Frederick Remington (Western painter)
Charles Russell (western painter)
California Condor
Ansel Adams
Los Angeles River
The Sacramento River
Hoover Dam
Rachel Carson (Science, environmental writer) Valdez oil spill
United Farm Workers, Cesar Chavez and the Grape Boycott Northern Spotted Owl
"Nature" in A John Ford Western (film)
David Brower (eco-activist)
Hanford Nuclear Power Site
Aldo Leopold and the "Land Ethic"
Wallace Stegner (nature writer)
Earth First!
Edward Abbey (nature writer)
Rachel Mills (eco-activist)
Terry Tempest Williams (nature writer)
Barry Lopez (nature writer)
California Desert Protection Act
The "Wise Use" Movement (anti-environmental movement) California Condor
Wilderness Act of 1964
Endangered Species Act
"Deep Ecology"
Ecofeminism
Ursula Le Guin
"Nature" at the Gene Autry Western Heritage Museum "Nature" at the San Diego Zoo
"Nature" at Disneyland
"Nature" at the Tucker Wildlife Sanctuary Greenpeace
Ecotheology
Bambi (Walt Disney Film)

doug sackman
uc irvine
sackman@uci.edu

Return to H-Women Home Page.