(Note: here's the reading list for my North American environmental history class. The class is limited to 25 students, 3000 level (ie, juniors).. Most of the students are engineering or forestry majors, not history majors, so I can't assume any prior knowledge. Canvas is our learning management system.)
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Course Description SS3520 North American Environmental History 3 credits
In this course, we examine how human-environment relations have changed both people and places in North America over the last four centuries, with a focus on the Great Lakes. Topics include Indigenous communities in the Great Lakes and their environmental relations;  changes associated with European invasions and colonization; slavery and its links to capitalism and environmental change; industrialization; toxics and environmental health; environmental movements and environmental justice.  
 
Books to Purchase

• Theodore Steinberg, 2012. Down to Earth, 2nd ed. Oxford University Press.
• Nancy Langston, 2017. Sustaining Lake Superior: An Extraordinary Lake in a Changing World. Yale University Press.
• Robin Wall Kimmerer, 2013. Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants. Milkweed.
• Additional readings are available in Canvas.

 
WEEKLY SCHEDULE

Week 1 Sept. 4 & 6: Introduction to Environmental History
Tuesday 9/4: Hurricane Harvey: The Legacies of History: read essays in Canvas before class!

• Al Shaw, Jeff Larson. 2016. “Hell and High Water.” ProPublica. March 3, 2016. https://www.propublica.org/article/hell-and-high-water-text. (Canvas).
• Ellison, Charles D. 2017. “Race and Class Are the Biggest Issues Around Hurricane Harvey and We Need to Start Talking About Them.” The Root. http://www.theroot.com/race-and-class-are-the-biggest-issues-around-hurricane-1798536183. (Canvas).
• “Harvey Is What Climate Change Looks Like.”  POLITICO Magazine. August 28, 2017. (Canvas).
• “Hurricane Harvey: Zip Code & Race Determine Who Will Bear Burden Of Climate Change.” Democracy Now! August 29, 2017. (Canvas).

 
Thursday 9/6: How can environmental history help us understand our past?

• Steinberg, Down to Earth, preface.

• Cronon, William. 1992. “Kennecott Journey: The Paths Out of Town,” in Cronon et al, ed. Under Western Skies. Norton. 28-51. (Canvas).

 
Week 2 Sept 11 & 13: Indigenous communities in the Upper Great Lakes
Tuesday 9/11: Indigenous North America

• Loew, Patty. 2013. Indian Nations of Wisconsin: Histories of Endurance and Renewal. Wisconsin Historical Society Press, selections.
• Steinberg, Down to Earth, Ch. 1
• Mann, Charles. 2002. “1491.” The Atlantic. (Canvas). https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2002/03/1491/302445/.

 
Thursday: Indigenous Great Lakes

• Langston, Sustaining Lake Superior, Preface and Ch. 1.
• Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, selections (Canvas).
• Loew, Indian Nations of Wisconsin, selections. (Canvas).

 
Week 3 Sept. 18 & 20: Colonial Invasions: Disease, Jesuits, and the Fur Trade in the Great Lakes
Tuesday: Disease

• Steinberg, Down to Earth, Ch. 2

• Erdrich, Louise. 2002, The Birch Bark House, Hyperion, selections. (Canvas).

 
Thursday: Fur trade

• Primary sources: Jean de Quens (1656), Radisson (1658-1660), Menard (1660-1661), Allouez (1666-1667), Marquette (1674-1675); from Up Country: Voices from the Midwestern Wilderness, ed. William Joseph Seno, Madison WI: Round River, 1985. (Canvas).

• White, Richard. 1991. The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650-1815. Cambridge, Preface, Ch. 1. (Canvas).

 
Week 4 Sept. 25 & 27: Slavery
Tuesday 9/25: Slavery: rice and tobacco landscapes

• Steinberg, Down to Earth, Ch. 3 & 4

• Carney, Judith Ann. Black Rice: The African Origins of Rice Cultivation in the Americas (selections).

 
Thursday 9/27: King Cotton and 12 Years a Slave

• Northup, Solomon. 2014. 12 Years a Slave. Graymalkin Media. Selections. (Canvas).
• “Blood on the Leaves: The Hidden Environmental Story in ‘12 Years a Slave.’” 2013. Grist . November 7, 2013. https://grist.org/living/blood-on-the-leaves-the-hidden-environmental-story-in-12-years-a-slave/. (Canvas).

• Fiege, Mark. 2013. The Republic of Nature: An Environmental History of the United States. University of Washington Press,  “King Cotton.” (Canvas).

 
Week 5 Oct. 2 and 4: Slavery and its Environmental Legacies
Tuesday 10/2: Slavery and the Civil War OCTOBER 2: MEET IN AOB 201, NOT GLRC 220

• Steinberg, Down to Earth, Ch. 5 & 6.

• “Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers’ Project, 1936-1938 - Digital Collections.” Library of Congress. https://www.loc.gov/collections/slave-narratives-from-the-federal-writers-project-1936-to-1938/about-this-collection/. Selections. (Canvas).

 
Thursday 10/4: Capitalism and the legacies of slavery

• Glave, Dianne D. 2010. Rooted in the Earth: Reclaiming the African American Environmental Heritage. Chicago Review Press. Selections. (Canvas).
• Baptist, Edward. 2016. The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism. New York: Basic Books. Selections. (Canvas).

• Grandin, Greg. 2015. “Capitalism and Slavery.” The Nation, May 1, 2015. https://www.thenation.com/article/capitalism-and-slavery/. (Canvas).

 
WEEK 6  Oct 9 & 11: Logging the Great Lakes
Tuesday 10/9: Great Lakes forests: logging (this class may be held online due to the State of Lake Superior Conference)

• Langston, Sustaining Lake Superior, Ch. 2.

 
Thursday 10/11: Great Lakes forests: pulp and paper and conservation concerns (this class may be held online due to the State of Lake Superior Conference)

• Langston, Sustaining Lake Superior, Ch. 3.
• Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, Selections. (Canvas).

• Johnson, Benjamin Heber. 1999. “Conservation, Subsistence, and Class at the Birth of Superior National Forest.” Environmental History 4 (1): 80–99. (Canvas).

 
WEEK 7  Oct 16 & 18: Mining the Great Lakes
Tuesday: Iron mining histories

• Langston, Sustaining Lake Superior, Ch. 4 & 5.

 
Thursday: Today’s legacies of past mining

• Langston, Sustaining Lake Superior, Ch. 6 and additional readings in Canvas.

 
WEEK 8  Oct. 23 & 25: The Conservation Movement, Women, and Urban Health.
Tuesday 10/23: movie on conservation history (Dr. Langston in DC for NSF panel review)
 
Thursday 10/25: the conservation movement and urban issues

• Steinberg, Down to Earth, Ch. 9 & 10
• Addams, Jane. 1916. Twenty Years At Hull-House. http://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.37329. Selections. (Canvas).
• Hoy, Suellen M. 1980. “‘Municipal Housekeeping’: The Role of Women in Improving Urban Sanitation Practices, 1880-1917.” In Pollution and Reform in American Cities, 173–98. (Canvas).

• Unger, Nancy C. 2012. Beyond Nature’s Housekeepers: American Women in Environmental History. Oxford University Press. Selections. (Canvas).

 
WEEK 9  Oct. 30 & Nov. 1: World War II and Cold War Environments
Tuesday 10/30: World War II

• Langston, Sustaining Lake Superior, Chapter 5-6.

• Steinberg, Down to Earth, Chapter 13.

 
Thursday Nov 1: Cold War Pollution Concerns

• Carson, Rachel. 1962. Silent Spring. Houghton Mifflin, Ch. 1, 3, 4, and 9. (Canvas).

 
WEEK 10  Nov. 6 & 8: Pollution 
Tuesday  Nov 6: Regulating Pollution

• Steinberg, Down to Earth, Ch. 14.

 
Thursday  Nov 8: Regulating Pollution

• No readings;  TAKE HOME MIDTERM DUE

 
WEEK 11  Nov. 13 & 15: Great Lakes Contaminants and Environmental Justice
Tuesday Nov 13: Pollution in the Great Lakes

• Langston, Sustaining Lake Superior, Ch. 7-8.
• Blum, Elizabeth D. 2008. Love Canal Revisited: Race, Class, and Gender in Environmental Activism. University Press of Kansas. Selections. (Canvas).

• Hoover, Elizabeth. 2017. The River Is in Us: Fighting Toxics in a Mohawk Community. Univ Of Minnesota Press. Selections. (Canvas).

 
Thursday Nov. 15: Environmental Justice, Wild Rice, and Grassy Narrows

• LaDuke, Winona. 1997. “Ricekeepers.” Orion, August 1997. Selections. (Canvas). https://orionmagazine.org/article/ricekeepers/
• Broten, Dolores and Claire Gilmore. 2017. “The Story of Grassy Narrows.” Watershed Sentinel, January. https://watershedsentinel.ca/articles/story-grassy-narrows/. (Canvas).
• “Mercury Rising: The Poisoning of Grassy Narrows - CBC Archives.” n.d. Accessed April 22, 2018. http://www.cbc.ca/archives/topic/mercury-rising-the-poisoning-of-grassy-narrows

• Porter, Jody. n.d. “Children of the Poisoned River.” CBC News. Accessed April 22, 2018. https://www.cbc.ca/news2/interactives/children-of-the-poisoned-river-mercury-poisoning-grassy-narrows-first-nation. (Canvas).

 
THANKSGIVING BREAK!
 
WEEK 12 Nov. 27 & 29: Flint: the Great Migration and its Environmental Legacies
Tuesday: the history of Flint and bad water

• Cha, J. Mijin. 2016. “Flint Water Crisis Is Classic Case of Environmental Racism.” The Hill. January 25, 2016. (Canvas).
• Craven, Julia, and Tyler Tynes. 2016. “The Racist Roots Of Flint’s Water Crisis.” Huffington Post, February 3, 2016. (Canvas).
• Clark, Anna. 2018. The Poisoned City: Flint’s Water and the American Urban Tragedy. Metropolitan Books. Selections. (Canvas).
• “The ‘Great Migration’ Was About Blacks Escaping Terror, Not Seeking Jobs.” City Lab. http://www.citylab.com/crime/2015/06/the-great-migration-was-about-racial-terror-not-jobs/396722/. (Canvas).
• Hanna-Attisha, Mona. 2018. What the Eyes Don’t See: A Story of Crisis, Resistance, and Hope in Flint. Penguin Random House. Selections. (Canvas).

 
Thursday: hearing on Flint

• Readings in Canvas to prepare for your positions. (Canvas).

 
WEEK 13: Dec. 4 & 6: Energy Histories, DAPL, and Line 5.
Tuesday: Dakota Access Pipeline

• “A History and Future of Resistance.” Sept. 2016. http://jacobinmag.com/2016/09/standing-rock-dakota-access-pipeline-protest/. (Canvas).

• Allard, LaDonna Brave Bull. Sept. 2016. “Why the Founder of Standing Rock Sioux Camp Can’t Forget the Whitestone Massacre.” YES! Magazine. (Canvas).

 
Thursday: Line 5

• Egan, Dan. 2017. “Oil And Water.” Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Jan. 18, http://projects.jsonline.com/news/2017/1/15/intro/oil-and-water.html. (Canvas).

 
WEEK 14  Dec. 11 & 13: Climate Change and Climate Justice
Tuesday: climate change and Lake Superior

• Langston, Sustaining Lake Superior, Ch. 8 and 9.

 
Thursday: climate justice and our future

• “1.5 Degrees Warming and the Search for Climate Justice for the Poor.” 2018. Inside Climate News. January 13, 2018. https://insideclimatenews.org/news/12012018/ipcc-climate-change-1.5-degrees-poverty-environmental-justice-draft-report  (Canvas).
• Gibson, Carrie. 2017. “How Colonialism and Racism Explain the Inept US Response to Hurricane Maria.” Vox, October 5, 2017. (Canvas).

• McKenna, Phil, and Molly Olmstead. 2017. “What’s Happening in Puerto Rico Is Environmental Injustice.” Slate, September 27, 2017. (Canvas).