Will Wright

This course examines the interactions of society, nature, and power in North American and United States history with emphasis over the period from pre-conquest to the present. The primary objective is to understand the ways in which changes in the natural world and changes in human societies have been integral, interdependent parts of history. We will focus on three major themes. First, we will studyhow nature, and people’s use of nature, shaped social, political, and economic systems. Second, we will consider some of the ways that people thought about nature and their place in it. And third, we will examine how people’s thoughts and actions altered nature, and the consequences of those alterations for both nature and society.

As we follow these themes through time and space, we will address topics such as epidemics, forests, agriculture, animals, water control and irrigation, soil erosion, extinctions, urbanization, national parks, mass consumption, toxics and pollution, energy transitions, climate change, conservation, environmentalism, and the onset of a new epoch in the Earth’s history that some scientists have labeled the Anthropocene. But we also will study the ways that conventional American history subjects—the Revolution, the Civil War, slavery and race relations, industrialization, world wars, and the development of the modern bureaucratic state—were functions of society’s interactions with nature.

To study these themes and issues, we will combine lectures, readings, discussion, research, field observation, and writing. The major project is “landscape analysis” by studying and practicing the concepts of common property theory, transect walk methodology, and other tools to understand the history of environmental change at a specific place.