This course focuses on environmental history and actual cases and the second centered on cultural attitudes and representations. It covers three  different issue-areas. 

The first area begins with a more classic methodology, introducing the students to US Environmental History, i.e., what has been the role of the territory (space) and nature from its geological origins and its existing megafauna when the first Americans arrived circa 14.000 years ago until today. It is subdivided in five sections each of them around a case study of the series of the US Center for the Humanities and of the institute itself (Friends of Thoreau Program): a) Native American cultures and their link to nature science and religion, and their original and current distribution the U.S. territory; b) the different ways in which the main European colonial cultures envisioned North American nature (Spanish, French and English, with additional excursus on other cultures such a Scottish/Welsh, Dutch, and the several pacifist religious groups, mainly in PA); c) the cycles in U.S. history on the perception of what space meant from the birth of the US until the 1870s and the use the citizens/settlers made of it (e.g. the meaning in the American collective psyche of the Lewis &Clark, mountain men, and Prince William & Bodmer expeditions west of the Mississippi, while the use of the Eastern territories continued: the cotton belt, Appalachians, and distribution of the different landscape and sense of place  cultures in the East the "paradise" approach of American vs. European geology and biology scientists, the Erie Canal, and the impact of the Civil War on American landscapes; homesteading of the west, and gold-rushes, as an addition to the "Manifest Destiny" policies of the successive US federal administrations, plus its singularities in the different areas: Mormon Utah, Great Plains, Great Basin, the two Plateaus, the South West desserts and California; d) the shock of the symbolic species extinctions and of the paradise in the 1870s (Great Auk, passenger pigeons, buffalo..) and the consolidation of the environmental culture and reinvention of nature in Western thought (the New England traditionalists -Emerson, Thoreau-, National Parks as "An American Idea", the "Forever Wild" clause for the Adirondacks in the NY State Constitution, and its main historical figures: : Audobon, Marsh, Ebenezer Simmons; the new vision for the west of Wesley Powell, Rooselvelt, Aldo Leopold, John Muir..; e) the cycles of balance and counterbalance through the economic raise of the U.S. to the firsrt economy of the world until the reaction of the so-called "environmental decade" -1970-1980- which set the current institutional framework of environmental policies for the rest of the world, and its aftermath).

 

The second area of knowledge that is covered, shorter in time and also following mainly traditional methods of pre-reading, lectures and discussions, focuses on the acquisition knowledge/skills to identify the  basic features of the different North American land and marine ecoregions, based on the relatively recent work of the North American Commission on Environmental Cooperation. From the identification of landscapes and animals unique to North America, to the different "sense of place" cultures that they entail within the framework of U.S. national identity.

 

The third area focuses on more specific disciplines and how they interact within the US and as part of US international policies: environmental ethics, nature literature (non-fiction and fiction), U.S. approach to environmental law and policy, including their interaction with the third sector (land stewardship, environmental and nature protection powerful NGOs - The Nature Conservancy, Sierra Club, National Wildlife Federation, NRDC...) and other more or less institutionalized  interactions: environmental justice, groundswell activism, ecofeminism, ecocriticism..., and their respective role in American nature and environmental thought as tangible and intangible cultural heritage

 

 While the first and second areas use as prevalent methodology the more classic lecture and additional selective pre-readings of texts, or other audiovisual materials -i.e. mostly documentaries- , they also slowly introduce students into a typical American methodology: Case Studies. They are clustered around  topics or issue areas, so that  students get used to creatively becoming immersed in a minimum of  in-depth research in each of the sections: environmental history and US bioregions and biodiversity. 

 

The third area is almost 100% based mainly -but not only- on the Case Studies Series that are listed later in the bibliography and they can be downloaded from: 

https://www.institutofranklin.net/en/research/united-states-area/environment/friends-thoreau/

or from

https://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/tserve/nattrans/nattrans.htm

 

The purpose if this strategy is to ensure that students are fully familiarized with the empirical method of learning implicit in the use of case studies, enabling them to identify issues, topics, questions ...  in need of farther research, and how to identify and refine its goals, its planning alternatives and the choice of the most adequate methodologies.

 

Once their exposure to the first two areas is completed, with the adequate weight in each of them to exposure of case studies analysis,  and the students are used and trained on the case study approach, they proceed, once the course gets into the third area, with more freedom on their own choices of topics for research, always supervised so that they receive help, when requested, when they intuitively perceive that they might be following paths leading to distraction or divergence from the original goals. The main focus of this part lies on ensuring they learn how to move from curiosity and anecdotal knowledge to serious high quality research.

 

If the authorities establish confinement should continue due to COVID-19, classes will be held online until said confinement is no longer applied.

 

• Understanding the program and methodologies. Intro to US environmental history. First Americans and their legacy in Native Americans. Spanish, French and British colonialism and their view of the American “paradise”.

• US environmental history. From the Lewis & Clark expedition to the end of the 19th century. Thoreau, Leopold, Muir, US National Parks

• US environmental History. From the turn of the 20th Century to current environmentalism. 

• Introduction to research on US nature conservation and environmentalism: Case Study on US Environmental History: “Whaling in New England during the 19th century”

• North American bioregions:  U.S. Green Infrastructure. Ecological Terrestrial Regions of North America: Towards a Common Perspective & Marine Ecoregions of North America.

• Introduction to research on US nature conservation and environmentalism: Case Study on US bioregions: “The Meaning of Salmon in the North West: A Historical, Scientific, and Sociological Case Study.” "Landscape Protection in Vermont" "The Sea Otter Recovery project"

• Case Studies on environmental institutions & policy: Choice of Case studies: Pollution in the Everglades National Park, Climate Change and Sustainable Development Goals in the U.S., Community Supported Agriculture, Boston Harbor Project, Oil spill prevention in California.

• Case Studies on environmental institutions & policy (Continued): Choice of Case studies: Pollution in the Everglades National Park, Climate Change and Sustainable Development Goals in the U.S., Community Supported Agriculture, Boston Harbor Project, Oil spill prevention in California. Land Cases (Nature Transformed). 

• Case studies on Native Americans and Nature: Native Americans and Natural Resources: the Black Mesa controversy; "In light of Reverence" Cases. Native Americans and the Land (Nature Transformed)

         Ecocriticism & Nature Writing: Choice: Case study on Adirondack Writing and the Wilderness Aesthetic; Case study on the Mexican Wolf; Case Study on the Red Wolf, Case Study on the California Condor; Case Study on the Puerto Rican Parrot; Case Study on the Whooping Crane; Fishermen Tales (Greenlaw); Wilderness and American Identity (Nature Transformed)

• Case Studies on environmental justice: Case study: Hispanic Illegal Immigrants in Elkhorn Slough; The NIMBY effect and the middle class reaction to environmental infrastructures: Case study on: Cape Cod Offshore Wind Park; Brownfields in African American urban environments. Environmental Justice (Nature Transformed)

• Environmental Ethics: Case studies: the Vivisection controversy in the U.S.; Introduction to the Animal Rights Movement in the U.S.

• Contemporary role of arts in environmental awareness: Case Study on painting: contribution of contemporary Haida and Ledger painting to Native American "Horse Culture" and environmental culture; Case Study on Film contributions: choice between Civil Action and Erin Brockovich.

• Presentation and discussion of research results by the students.