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Slide 1 Roots of U.S. environmental history Environmental history is an important element of environmental studies, and it can teach us a lot about how humans think about nature, and why this matters. In this module, we’re going to talk about U.S. environmental history, in particular, and to start, the evolution of this field.

Slide 2 Defining Environmental History 1. Recording human encounters with the natural world 2. An approach to conducting historical research that “brings nature into the story” ➢ How have we modified nature; how has this changed over time? Why & how? ➢ How do we think about nature; how has this changed over time? Why & how? 2 “Environmental history is both one of the oldest and newest fields within human history” – Carolyn Merchant Carolyn Merchant writes that environmental history is both the oldest AND the newest fields in the history of human activity on Earth. To understand what she means, we need to look at two overlapping definitions of this field. The first involves recording how humans have interacted with and changed the non-human natural world. The second takes this a step further, considering the history of all human activities and bringing nature into this history. In particular, this approach to history asks how we have altered nature, but also WHY, and how both the causes and effects have varied across time. And, environmental historians also incorporate an examination of how humans THINK about nature and how and why this has changed over time. What environmental history is NOT is a history of just environmentalism. This is included in these histories, of course, but it is not the sole focus of environmental history.

Slide 3 Early environmental histories 3 1956 1864 1962 1949 The next few slides are going to use some essential readings in environmental history that will help you to understand how environmental history emerged as a field and what it looks like today. So, while environmental history as a field didn’t emerge until the 1960s and ‘70s, there were earlier texts that contributed. In the mid-1800s, George Perkins Marsh famously argued for conservation of natural resources in his book, “Man and Nature.” A follow-up to his book was published in the 1950s, “Man’s Role in Changing the Face of the Earth”, which published the proceedings of a conference meant to update Marsh’s ideas to recognize the growing impact of humans on their natural environment. A Sand County Almanac, which we’ve discussed as a strong influence on environmental ethics, was also an early contributor to the field of environmental history as it documented how humans impacted the ecology of a place: Sand County, Wisconsin. Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, while more specific to pollution, was an early example of studying the recent history of humans negatively affecting their natural environment.

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Slide 4 Environmental history emerges as a subfield 4 Nash 1967 Cronon 1996 Merchant 2002 Just to give some examples of numerous important texts in this field, particularly those focused on the US, the 1967 book “Wilderness and the American Mind” was seen as jumpstarting the field in the ‘60s, just as the environmentalism movement in the U.S. was also catching on. More recently, William Cronon played an important role with his book, “Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature”, as has Carolyn Merchant who wrote an essential overview environmental history that we’ll use in this class. Environmental history is still a pretty young field.

Slide 5 Topical environmental histories 5 That said, there are some wonderful books out there that look at how humans think about nature and how this affects their environment. Here are some examples from a broad range of specific topics that environmental historians have written about. The history of the now-extinct passenger pigeon and how this illustrates the unsustainable harvesting of a natural resource. Stephen Pyne’s “Fire in America” examines how people view and manage wildfires and how this has changed over time. “The Dust Bowl”, by Donald Worster, one of my favorite writers, uses interviews to talk about how humans caused and responded to the 1930s Dust Bowl, with lessons for today’s environmental crises. “Waste and Want” is a history of trash and how what we think of and manage trash has changed over time. And finally, Lyme disease, which, like COVID-19, is in essence an environmental hazard, is explained by Mary Beth Pfeiffer in the context of tick ecology and climate change.

Slide 6 An environmental lens on historical periods 6 Other environmental histories focus on particular periods in U.S. history, from the impacts of colonists’ arrival on the already-inhabited landscape of New England, to the environmental impacts of the Civil War and the cotton industry, to how the automobile changed the wilderness movement, to how 1950s suburbs led to a rise in American environmentalism.

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Slide 7 Cities as sites of environmental history 7 Other environmental histories focus on the role of the natural landscape in creating cities and how urban growth in these places change the land.

Slide 8 Histories of the environment, diversity & difference 8 Another very important element in the field of environmental history, particularly as a recent trend in the broader field of history, is its focus on and recognition of the importance of identity, of race, ethnicity, class, and gender, on how people interacted with the environment. “Dumping in Dixie”, you’ll remember, is a seminal text in the environmental justice movement. We can also look at culture affected the role of women in environmental history, and how ideas about race affected public health responses to yellow fever in New Orleans. Growing up near the Adirondacks, I was particularly interested in Jacoby’s “Crimes Against Nature”, which examined how negative views of poaching and squatting in the Adirondacks by people in poverty influenced the U.S. conservation movement. All of these works, and so many more, illustrate the wide range of environmental history approaches to understanding nature & society.