This blog documents the grafting of a side project to the side of the research in my recently completed dissertation, "Thinking Like a Floodplain: Water, Work, and Time in the Connecticut River Valley, 1790-1870." This initial body of research studied responses to proposed and enacted changes in the flow of the Connecticut. It explored minute changes occurring across seasons, geological changes that had begun before European settlement, and would continue for as long as the valley existed. And it explored how residents of the valley remembered the historical flow of water and used this knowledge in articulating their opinions regarding proposals to re-engineer the river. Across six chapters it described communities actively engaged in water management practices even when they did not possess the technical skill, the political authority, or the capital to assert some semblance of control over the river.
Having defended my dissertation a little less than six weeks ago, I am currently taking a break from its further development and focusing my work time on learning a new set of skills in digital history that can eventually help to expand the vision and scope of this research as I try to transform it from a dissertation into a book. Even in the last three years of working on my dissertation, software such as QGIS, Paper Machines, Voyant Tools and the Edinburgh Geoparser have drastically simplified the process of working with text. Perhaps more importantly, improvements in OCR programs seem to have made many texts legible for processing in ways that they were not, or at least did not seem to be, when I was tending the growth of my dissertation.
These tools can potentially transform the scope of my research. I wrote my chapters as episodic accounts of how people responded to changing strategies for managing water. It took archival sources describing specific debates over water use and accounted for what exactly their proposers intended to do and how their opponents responded to those proposals. Mapping and machine reading tools seem to offer an opportunity to construct more broadly synoptic accounts of how people managed water. A vast corpus of geographical writing from the Early Republic provides minute descriptions of the state of industry, agriculture, and commerce in New England towns, and learning how to categorize the structure of these texts, mark up their standardized components, and represent this data spatially will provide an opportunity to understand new dimensions in landscape change across the nineteenth century.
But between my work typing today and the achievement of that goal lies a great deal of technical learning, training in digital history, and reflection on broader questions about history, temporalities, and landscape.
Blogging research processes in environmental and digital history. Focused on western New England but studying the world.
Wednesday, August 24, 2016
Using the journal Environmental History to introduce primary source analysis
In this class session, I passed out copies of Environmental History and guided students through the analysis of primary and secondary sources using the journal's cover art. Editors Nancy Langston and Lisa Brady have done an excellent job working with graphic editors Neil Maher, Cindy Ott, and Finis Dunaway to curate images that support its essays. In class, I split my students into groups and had them take notes on one of these covers and the article that it accompanied. This helped to illustrate the relationship between primary and secondary sources and provided an outline of the key elements to understand in a journal article while preparing for classwork. It took about the full fifty minutes to introduce the materials, allow the students time to analyze the documents and to bring them back to present their findings on the primary sources to the group at large. In general, this provided an effective introductory class, and gave me a chance to hear everyone participate. I think that I will fold the primary and secondary source analysis in with one another in a future version of this lesson. I look forward to sharing more about exercises in this class next week when we complete a similar exercise analyzing scientific articles.
Reading primary sources and secondary sources
Primary Sources
Begin with the cover of the journal. Its illustrations are primary sources that relate to the argument of one of the articles inside (a secondary source). Read the cover as a primary source.
Describe the following elements:
- Provenance: What is the document, Who produced the document, when did they make it? (These details will likely be described immediately after the table of contents).
- Content: Provide a brief description of the image or images that are shown (if it was the Mona Lisa you might say 'a portrait of a woman smiling in front of a green hilly landscape with a river winding through it').
- Representation: Does the image suggest reality, symbolism, propaganda, political beliefs(ideology)? Is there a combination of these representations?
- Assumptions and values (in the text, and our own).
- Relationship to other texts (Read the abstract of the article connected with the image. What does the content of the image suggest about the article).
- Identify the argument that the image supports. (This will also be clearer after reading the abstract).
Secondary Sources
Now that you understand a primary source, take a look at the secondary source that actively interprets it. This exercise will develop the scaffolding for understanding a secondary source's argument, structure and context. It should help you figure out why you're reading this particular source and what its key points are.
1) Look at the title and heading titles. These will tell you something about the source's narrative arc.
2) Identify any illustrations. Why were they included? In the sciences, figures can sometimes tell the whole argument. History is not always so straightforward.
3) Introductions usually consist of three parts:
- A hook, consisting of a short anecdote designed to draw the reader's attention.
- Historiography, or the previous works on related topics that identify the author's colleagues.
- A summary of the argument.
- Reading the introduction of an academic article your are likely to come in contact with a buzzword that you're not familiar with (high modernism, the wilderness myth, the anthropocene, etc.) Note these.
4) Conclusions in Environmental History are often short and sweet. They summarize the argument in light of the evidence presented.
5) The notes (endnotes in this case) help to explain how the author figured out their main point.
Syllabus: Environment and History
I developed this course as an introduction to the key concepts in global environmental history. I've done a raft of new reading in preparation and I'm also working on building rubrics and guides to help lead my students through interdisciplinary readings. I'll be posting more of these as the semester runs on and I'll reflect on its successes and failures as I muddle through.
Environment and History
Jared Taber, Ph.D. jstaber@ku.edu
EVRN 103/HIST 103: University of Kansas
Fall 2016
Goals
- This class teaches historical thinking as a method for understanding environmental change.
- We will explore people’s different, sometimes conflicting, perspectives on human nature and how these perspectives shape their understanding of history.
- When you leave this class, you will be able to pose thoughtful, effective, and answerable questions about how history has shaped and continues to shape academic scholarship and everyday life.
Structure
This course will cover key periods in the global history of environmental change in four units structured around historical processes that loom large in environmental studies:
- We will situate the human experience in ‘big history’ a method stressing continuities joining history with earth science and biology.
- We will look at the legacies of Ancient civilizations and medieval communities as they shaped, and continue to shape, the landscape and our relationship with the natural world.
- We will study the origins and environmental consequences of the waves of urbanization, empire building, and industrialization in the last five hundred years.
- Finally, we will ask how revolutions in the use of resources such as coal, nitrates, industrial chemicals and nuclear power have reshaped the natural world.
Credit
Three Essay Drafts: 40%
Your term paper will explore why there is such a deep disagreement about the origins and consequences of the Anthropocene epoch—a proposed period in the geological timeline where human activity has become the most influential force in changing the Earth. You do not need to have prior familiarity with the Anthropocene. We will read a number of essays discussing the processes that can define the Anthropocene and its historical, social, and ecological implications. Your paper will provide critical descriptions of the relationships between these essays and explore their implications for the interpretation of environmental history.
The definition of the Anthropocene is itself a subject of ongoing scholarly debate, and I will judge your essays based upon how you explain and engage with the significance of that debate.
Your drafts will be completed and assessed for revisions according to the following schedule.
- A 900-1100 word initial draft will be due in discussion section during week three.
- You will share your paper with the class in a blackboard discussion list, and participate in peer editing and conversation about your findings during discussion in week four.
- A 2000-2200 word second draft will be posted to blackboard and turned in during discussion section on week seven.
- This version will incorporate new readings and situate your draft relative to those written by your colleagues.
- You should ask yourself why you came to a different conclusion or emphasized different evidence from your colleagues.
- This will also be posted to blackboard and peer edited in section during week eight.
- A 3000-3500 word final draft will be due in discussion section on week twelve.
- During the last week of class we will develop a collaborative map laying out the different answers to the question of when the Anthropocene began.
I will grade these essays first for their overall quality and second for their improvement. Part of your grade on any draft will also depend on the strength of your feedback in the peer editing and critical responses to your fellow students.
Attendance/Contributions to learning: 30%
Discussions and in-class activities will contribute to the tools that you rely upon in writing your essay drafts and final presentations. Come to class prepared to listen, discuss and participate in the learning process. You are allowed three unexplained and unexcused absences. If you miss more than three classes you will lose three participation points per absence. If you are unable to attend for documentable reasons, come talk to me as soon as possible.
Two reviews of the use of history in global environmental discourse: 5% each
This course focuses on history as a force shaping our knowledge of and relationship with the environment. You will produce two 300-word reviews of how past environments are depicted in published work. These reports should cover issues stretching beyond the United States, but they need not be academic works. They can include everything from the depictions of Medieval winter in Game of Thrones to Mel Brooks’ depiction of the stone age in “The History of the World Part I.” They can also include serious works such as the IPCC reports on climate change or scientific articles from peer-reviewed journals. You cannot use the materials covered in this class, but anything else is fair game.
Final Presentations: 20%
In lieu of a final exam, you will collaborate with your classmates to develop an oral presentation reviewing the key findings from one section of the course. During your colleague’s’ presentations you will complete a rubric that reviews and critiques their presentations.
Readings
Week 1: Introduction, how do people use history in environmental studies?
No assigned readings
- 8/22 Monday: Introduction: history in environmental studies
- 8/24 Wednesday: Primary Sources, Secondary Sources, and Criticism
- 8/26 Friday: No Discussions
Week 2: Deep time! How do we define it? What does it have to do with history?
Read “Welcome to the Anthropocene” and follow worksheet to get through Crutzen, Steffens, McNeill “The Anthropocene.” and Ruddiman “The Anthropogenic Greenhouse Era.” We will go over Crutzen and Ruddiman in class on Friday.
- 8/29 Monday: Big history and regimes. Overview of journal articles
- 8/31 Wednesday: What is a geological epoch?
- 9/2 Friday: How to read scientific journals.
Week 3: What is human nature? How can we assess the assumptions that our sources take for granted?
Read Hariri, Sapiens and Zuk, Paleofantasy.
- 9/5 Monday: What is human nature?
- 9/7 Wednesday: Why do we think we’re maladapted to the modern world?
- 9/9 Friday: Hierarchy, horizontality, aggression, and human nature.
Week 4: Peopling the World
Read Gillis, Human Shore Ch. 1; Certini “Anthopogenic Soils are Golden Spikes for the Anthropocene” (use worksheet)
- 9/12 Monday: Migrations in Eurasia/Africa
- 9/14 Wednesday: Peopling the Americas
- 9/16 Friday: Peer Editing
Week 5: Ancient Civilizations
Read Gillis, The Human Shore Ch. 2, selections from Frontinus, Edgeworth, “Diachronous Anthropocene” (use worksheet)
- 9/19 Monday: How do we know the history of ancient civilizations?
- 9/21 Wednesday: Shipping, Trade, and War in the Mediterranian and Indian Oceans
- 9/23 Friday: What Frontinus tells us about Roman water and society
Week 6: Medieval tradition and local knowledge
Read Hoffman Environmental History of Medieval Europe
- 9/26 Monday: Columella, the Georgics, and Roman ideas about nature
- 9/28 Wednesday: Feudal land use and traditional knowledge.
- 9/30 Friday: What is a commons?
Week 7: Where was the center of the medieval world?
Read Abu Lughod Before European Hegemony, primary documents on the plague
- 10/3 Monday: What was the Medieval world system?
- 10/5 Wednesday: The Medieval Warm Period, the Little Ice Age, the Global Crisis.
- 10/7 Friday: Mapping The Plague
- Hand out Columbian Exchange scavenger hunt worksheets!
- Second Draft due in discussion sections.
Week 8: Fall Break/The New World
Read: Lewis and Maslin on the Anthropocene Crosby Columbian Exchange
- 10/10 Monday: Columbus Day, no class.
- 10/12 Wednesday: The Columbian Exchange as a starting point for the Anthropocene
- 10/14 Friday: Peer editing of second drafts
- Bring the results of the Columbian Exchange scavenger hunt to class.
Week 9: Environmental histories of slavery
Read extracts from Northup, Equiano; {Article on Maronage TBA}
- 10/17 Monday: Debt, water, and rice, in the Atlantic World
- 10/19 Wednesday: Cotton, corn, and the nitrogenous anthropocene
- 10/21 Friday: Environmental histories of escape
Week 10: Frontiers
Read Turner “The Frontier”; Savoy, Trace; Cronon, “Trouble With Wilderness”
- 10/17 Monday: Frontiers, wilderness, maronage, and colonies
- 10/19 Wednesday: Ecology in the Pacific World
- 10/21 Friday: Manahatta Project (meet in budig computer lab)
Week 11: Environmental histories of industrialization
- 10/31 Monday: Waterpower and Coal
- 11/2 Wednesday: Coal and global empire
- 11/4 Friday: Stream restoration and industrial development
Week 12: Environmental histories of chemistry
- 11/7 Monday: Aniline dyes and the beginnings of business chemistry
- 11/9 Wednesday: The ecology of oil extraction
- 11/11 Friday: Restoring landscapes of chemical pollution
Week 13: Nuclear Ecology Odum, Environment, Power, and Society; Alexeivich, Voices From Chernobyl
- 11/14 Monday: The nuclear origins of global ecology
- 11/16 Wednesday: The timelines of Chernobyl
- 11/18 Friday: Restoring nuclear landscapes
Week 14: Computers and Ecology no readings
- 11/21 Monday: Environmental History on the Oregon Trail (meet in computer classroom, location TBA)
- 11/23 Wednesday: Thanksgiving Break
- 11/25 Friday: Thanksgiving Break
Week 15: Globalized Environments
Read Chepesuik “Where the Chips Fall” Davis “Consumption Based Accounting for Carbon Emissions”
- 11/28 Monday: Climate Models
- 11/30 Wednesday: Clean chips and dirty water
- 12/1 Friday: Identifying greenwashing.
Week 16: Synthesis
- 12/5 Monday: Drawing together the threads of Environmental history
- 12/7 Wednesday: Review, wrap up.