| Professor Ronald E. Doel | 302C Milam Hall; tel. 737-3469 |
| Winter 2008 | Office hours: 11:00 AM - noon Fridays, or by appointment [usually after seminar ends as well] |
| Geo 522 / Geo 422 | email: doelr@geo.oregonstate.edu |
| T Th 8:30 - 9:50 AM in Wilkinson 207 | |
| Valley Library Resources for Geo 522/422 | last updated: 25 March 2008 |
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Reconstructing Historical Landscapes
This seminar examines the use of historical methods to interpret the physical, ecological, social, and cultural conditions of regions within the historical past. While this research seminar will focus broadly on the methods employed by historians and others to interpret the past, we shall place special emphasis on using historical techniques to uncover the environmental conditions of particular landscapes at earlier times.
Topics to be addressed in this seminar include environmental history; historical inquiries into material culture; the utilization of archival, narrative, photographic sources, and census data; and the history of urban regions.
This course satisfies the Resource Geography distribution requirements in the Department of Geosciences.
We will arrange a trip to the Oregon State Archives in Salem (or to the Oregon Historical Society in Portland) early in the quarter.
Required Texts
[all paperback; available at the Memorial Union bookstore]
Cronon, William. Changes in the Land:
Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England. (1983)
Meinig, D.W., ed. The Interpretation of Ordinary Landscapes: Geographical Essays. (1979)
Russell, Emily W.B. People and the Land Through Time: Linking Ecology and History. (1997)
Additional readings are available: hardcopy at Circulation / Reserves in Valley Library; see also hotlinks below.
Requirements
This is a discussion seminar. Because the success of this course will depend on
students being prepared to discuss readings, it is imperative that all reading assignments be completed before
seminar meetings. All students will write a one-page paper (circa 250 words) each week, based on a pre-assigned
theme, that addresses the week's reading; these are due at the start of class each Tuesday.
Seminar members will also prepare a research paper (for undergraduates, 12-16 pages, double-spaced, roughly 250
words per page, in Courier type 10 or equivalent; for graduate students, 20-25 pages), whose topic will be chosen
in consultation with the instructor. Careful identification of critical problems and high standards of analysis
are expected. This paper will be due at the end of the quarter. The
final deadline shall be Wednesday, March 19, at 3 PM, in the Department of Geosciences, 104 Wilkinson; electronic submission may be substituted for paper drop-off. All students will also make
an oral presentation and lead a brief class discussion of their analysis and conclusions. These presentations will
be concentrated in the final weeks of the seminar.
Students are expected to be honest and ethical in their academic work. Academic dishonesty is defined as an intentional
act of deception in one of the following areas: cheating-- use or attempted use of unauthorized materials, information
or study aids; fabrication-- falsification or invention of any information; assisting-- helping another commit
an act of academic dishonesty; tampering-- altering or interfering with evaluation instruments and documents; plagiarism--
representing the words or ideas of another person as one's own.
All seminar members are to enroll in the Blackboard site for this class (which also allow for on-line discussion
and debate among students, access to course documents, and participation in group projects). Log on at http://my.oregonstate.edu;
see FAQ at this site for further instructions. Students are expected to have an active email account
as well (any account is fine) but be sure mail is forwarded from your ONID accounts! To forward email, logon to your ONID account, then click on the 'Change email forward' link in the left column).
Grading and evaluation: There will
be no mid-term or final exam. In their stead, grades will be based on the following: the research paper (50% of
grade), oral presentations in seminar and weekly (brief) essays (30%), and participation in general class discussions,
including Blackboard discussion forums (20%).
Students are encouraged to take advantage of the university's Writing Center in preparing research papers for this
course. The Writing Center phone is 737-5640; you can also stop by the Writing Desk ( at The Valley Library ), phone: 737-8385.
Prerequisites: Senior or graduate student
standing required for enrollment.
On Reserve at Valley Library: [request the course packet VR ***; all readings are included. Several copies are available.]
* 200 Years of Census Taking: Population
and Housing Questions, 1790-1990. Washington, DC: Bureau of the Census, 1989.
* Barber, Russell J. "Topolygy." Chapter in
Barber, Doing Historical Archaeology: Exercises Using Documentary, Oral, and Material
Evidence (Englewood Cliffe, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1994).
* Blumenson, John J.-G. Identifying American Architecture: A
Pictoral Guide to Styles and Terms, 1600-1945 [revised edition]. Nashville, TN:
American Association for State and Local History, 1981.
* Cloud, John and Keith Clarke. "Through a Shuttle Darkly: The
Tangled Relationships Between Civilian, Military and Intelligence Remote Sensing in the Early American Space Program."
[Draft from Workshop on Secrecy and Knowledge Production,
Cornell University, 1997.]
* Cronon, William. Nature's Metropolis: Chicago
and the Great West. New York: W.W. Norton, 1991. [Excerpt.]
* Leffler, Phyllis K. and Joseph Brent. Public History Readings. Malabar, Florida: Krieger Publishing Company, 1992. [Readings
from this volume cataloged as Leffler/Brent 1, L-B 2, and L-B 3; see below]
* Lewis, Pierce. "Common Landscapes as Historic Documents," in Steven Lubar and W. David Kingery, eds., History from Things: Essays on Material Culture (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993).
* Miller, Frederic, "Archives and Historical Manuscripts,"
in Barbara J. Howe and Emory L. Kemp, eds., Public History: An Introduction (Malabar, FL: Robert E. Krieger Publishing Company, 1986), pp. 36-56.
* Ryan, William B.F. and Walter C. Pitman. Noah's Flood:
The New Scientific Discoveries about the Event that Changed History. New York: Simon
& Schuster, 1998.
* Stephens, Hal G. and Eugene M. Shoemaker. In the Footsteps of John Wesley Powell: An Album of Comparative Photographs of the Green and Colorado Rivers, 1871-1872 and 1968. Boulder: Johnson Books; Denver: The Powell Society, 1987. (F767.G7 S74) [Excerpt.]
| Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3 | Week 4 | Week 5 |
| Week 6 | Week 7 | Week 8 | Week 9 | Week 10 |
Introduction
Readings: Cronon, pp. vii-ix, 3-15
|
AUDIO FEATURE Using Historical Evidence: Is the Earth Warming? ... On the use of historical data to understand earlier environments (in this case, the ocean): Oceanographer Profile (14.4 | 28.8)
-- Finding out whether the earth is warming up or not From National Public Radio's All Things Considered, Friday, March 23, 2000 |
American Landscapes: The Perspective of Environmental History
Readings: Cronon, pp. 19-81
Russell, pp. 1-18
Week 3 January 22, 24 -§- Jan. 22 meeting at Valley Library [see below]
Archival and Primary Source Research
Nb -- please go directly to the Autzen Room in Valley Library on Tuesday, 22 January
Reading: Miller, "Archives and Historical Manuscripts," pp. 36-56 [skim] [Circulation / Reserves]
Russell J. Barber, "Toponymy," 17-26 [Circulation / Reserves]
Historical Landscape Transformations: Historical Uses of Landscapes
Readings: Cronon, pp. 82-170
William Cronon, Nature's Metropolis, pp. xv-xix, 387-390 (look particularly at maps in this work, such as on p. 175 and between pp. 274-291, for what they reveal about regional landscape change) [Circulation / Reserves]
Ecological History: Physical and Biological Changes
Readings: Russell, pp. 19-107
Leffler and Brent (1), pp. 215-221 [Circulation / Reserves]
BBC film, The Flood [to be screened on Thursday 7 Feb.] [skim conclusion of Ryan and Pitman, Noah's Flood [May be missing from Circulation / Reserves -- will update] § More on Bill Ryan, Walter Pitman, and The Flood. For an overview of current thinking on the implications of the flood, click here [article by Douglass Bailey].
* Further information on Noah's Flood may be found here and in this PBS Scientific American Frontiers website
|
AUDIO FEATURE Another Perspective on The Flood:
(from National Public Radio and the National Geographic Society) |
Week 6 [we meet only on Thursday, February 14 this week--perhaps with an earlier starting time]
Patterns of Landscape Settlement: From Surveys to Census Data
Readings: Russell, pp. 108-173; skim pp. 237-246
Leffler and Brent (2), pp. 139-159 [Circulation / Reserves]
200 Years of Census Taking [Circulation / Reserves; entirety]
Investigating Modern Landscapes: Urban Regions and Material Culture
Readings: Meinig, pp. 33-48, 89-102
Pierce Lewis, "Common Landscapes as Historic Documents," pp 115-139 [Circulation / Reserves]
Blumenson [Circulation / Reserves; skim carefully] [copies will be available in seminar]
Interpreting Historical Landscapes Through Oral Testimony and Photography
Readings: Meinig, pp. 164-192
Leffler and Brent (3), pp. 261-283, 308-321 [Circulation / Reserves]
Stephens and Shoemaker, part 1, part 2, part 3 [skim carefully] [Circulation / Reserves]
Cloud and Clarke, "Through a Shuttle Darkly: The Tangled Relationships Between Civilian, Military and Intelligence Remote Sensing in the Early American Space Program" [Circulation / Reserves]
| AUDIO FEATURE How Trustworthy are Photographs? Photo Fakery (14.4 | 28.8) -- Host Bob Edwards talks to Dino Brugioni, a former senior officer of the CIA's National Photographic Interpretation Center about his new book,"Photo Fakery: The History and Techniques of Photographic Deception and Manipulation." Brugioni says people have been tampering with photos in order to fool or entertain others since the invention of photography. People and objects can be put in or taken out of pictures, or events can be staged for the camera. Brugioni says some manipulations in recent years...including the darkening of O.J. Simpson's mug shot on the cover of a national news magazine...can call into question the credibility of the news media. (7:17) from NPR'S MORNING EDITION, Wednesday, April 26, 2000: |
Research week for seminar participants
Week 10 March 11 [Tuesday] In-class research presentations begin [we will conclude during finals week, time to be arranged].
Supplementary Reading List
There are several general reference works of great value as supplementary reading:
Crumley, Carole. Historical Ecology: Cultural Knowledge and Changing Landscapes.
Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press; distributed by the University
of Washington Press, 1994. GF90 .H57 1994
Hammond, Kenneth A., Macinko, George and Fairchild, Wilma B 1978. Sourcebook on the Environment: A Guide to the Literature. University of Chicago Press, Chicago : 1978. GF41 .S6 [On Reserve at Valley Library]
Kingery, W. David, ed. Learning from Things: Method and Theory of Material Culture Studies. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1996. [On Reserve at Valley Library]
Orser, Charles E., Jr., ed. Images of the Recent Past: Readings in Historical Archaeology. Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press, 1996. (A good overview of the state of contemporary archaeological research, but with little emphasis on studies of landscape.)
Turner II, B.L. et. al., eds. The Earth as Transformed by Human Action: Global and Regional Changes in the Biosphere over the Past 300 Years. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. [On Reserve at Valley Library]
Additional reading lists
will be distributed in seminar [click here for current list].
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