Dr. Michael Lewis
History
607 – Seminar: Chesapeake and Middle Atlantic History
T/W/Th
6:00-8:30
FH
132
Office:
389 Holloway Hall
E-mail: mllewis@salisbury.edu
Phone:
(410) 677-5020
Office Hours: By appointment, any day of the week.
Course
Texts:
Boyd
Gibbons, Wye Island
Davidson
and Rountree, Eastern Shore Indians of Maryland and Virginia
Richard White, Organic
Machine
Robert Grumet, Bay,
Plain and Piedmont: A Landscape History of the Chesapeake Heartland from 1.3
Billion Years Ago to 2000 (internet version)
Edited Collection, Exploring
the Chesapeake’s Forgotten River: Perspectives on the Wicomico (internet
version)
Selected articles
(available on the course website or given in class)
Course
Description and Objectives:
I
have two primary objectives in this course: to introduce you to the sub-field of
environmental history – its concerns and methods – and to provide an
overview of the specific environmental history of Delmarva and the Chesapeake
region. In both elements of the
course, our readings will be representative rather than exhaustive, as you would
expect of a three-week course. This
course should be viewed as a starting point for further research and study,
rather than a comprehensive survey of a topic. Chronologically, we will range
from prehistory to yesterday – my intent is to provide you with a sample of
how an environmental history approach can relate to different periods and
different topics in the study of regional history.
The enrollment for this course will be quite small – this will allow us
to pursue your own questions and comments, but it will also put a strong burden
on you to be an active participant in class discussions.
As environmental history is best studied not just in a classroom, we will
be taking field trips every Wednesday evening.
A school van will be provided for these trips – please make sure that
you show up on time so that we are able to complete the trip before the end of
our allotted class time. Please
talk with me if you have any special interests or concerns not reflected in the
class syllabus.
Grading
Scale:
A
90-100%
B
80-89%
C
70-79%
D
60-69%
F
59% and below
Course
Requirements:
Grading
Breakdown:
Participation:
20%
Four
Reaction Papers (informal):
40%
Final
Assignment:
30%
Presentation:
10%
Participation:
Participation
in class is a precondition for success. I will expect you to come to class with
all assigned readings completed, and notes on the readings as necessary for you
to organize your thoughts. Please
read actively – jot down questions that you have about the readings, whether
over things you don’t understand, or don’t agree with, or particularly like.
I recognize that the reading load is heavy, but this is a graduate level
course, and we must squeeze a semester’s worth of activity into five weeks.
I suspect that you will be reading quite a bit during the week. I have purposely scheduled field-trips for every Wednesday
course, so that you will be able to have two days to prepare for Thursday’s
assignments. These field trips are required portions of the class, and please
treat them as such – bring appropriate note-taking tools, and active
questions.
Reaction
Papers:
Each Tuesday, I will expect you to turn in an informal, typed, reaction to the
previous week’s readings and discussions.
In these reactions, I would like for you to look for connections between
the readings, for elements that you particularly liked, and things that you did
not agree with. What particularly
struck you about the previous week’s material? Each reaction paper will serve
as an intellectual sign-post for the class – how did the previous week’s
material and discussions impact your understanding of history, broadly or
locally conceived? Two pages are
sufficient, but you can go slightly longer if you wish.
Final
Project: No
later than July 1st you will need to meet with me to talk about and
decide upon your class project. In
a five week course it would be difficult to carry out a full research project
and produce a seminar paper of 25 pages. Instead,
I will ask you to turn in a preliminary report of a proposed research project.
This report will consist of three primary parts: (1) a survey of the
secondary literature, both regional and international, related to your topic (in
paragraph form, complete with bibliography), (2) a discussion of the primary
source base for your project, (3) a
research plan for how you would carry out this research project, if you had more
time. This should include a potential thesis.
I expect that you will spend the most space describing part (1).
Please work with me on your project – I don’t want you to struggle on
this by yourself, or risk turning something in that I did not want.
Presentation:
On
the final class meeting, July 24th, each of you will be asked to lead
the class for between 20-25 minutes. You
will share with the class your research project.
This is not meant to be a strict lecture, however.
On the preceding Thursday, July 17th, you will pass out to
your classmates copies of one article that you found particularly useful or
provocative. This article will be
considered an assigned reading for the rest of the class. This final class
meeting will allow each of you to both present material to your classmates, as
well as lead a brief discussion of the common reading.
Writing Across the Curriculum:
Writing
across the Curriculum is a nationally recognized initiative that is designed
to improve students’ learning through encouraging different types of writing
in all university courses. This
course is committed to this program.
Class Schedule and Reading Assignments
June
24:
Introduction to class; discussion of class goals, research tools and the
class project.
June
25:
Field Trip (bring $4 for admission to Furnace Town)
June
26:
-Mart Stewart, “Environmental History: Profile of a Developing
Field,” History Teacher 31, no. 3 (May 1998): 351-368.
-Hal Rothman, “A
Decade in the Saddle: Confessions of a Recalcitrant Editor,” Environmental
History 7, no. 1 (January, 2002): 10-21.
-Adam Rome, “What
Really Matters in History: Environmental Perspectives on Modern America,” Environmental
History 7, no. 2 (April 2002): 303-318.
-Michael Lewis,
“Seeing the World Whole: An Interview with William Cronon,” Iowa Journal
of Cultural Studies 18 (1999): 1-10.
July
1:
Reaction Due for Week One Material
Richard
White, Organic Machine:
July
2:
Field Trip
July
3:
- John Smith, The Description of Virginia by Captaine Smith (1612)
-
Andrew White, A Briefe Relation of the Voyage Unto Maryland
(1633)
- Unknown, An Account
of the Colony of the Lord Baron of Baltamore
(1633)
- George Alsop A
Character of the Province of Maryland (1666)
- Carville Earle,
“Environment, Disease, and Mortality in early
Virginia,” Journal of
Historical Geography 5, no. 4 (1979): 365-390.
July
8:
Reaction Due for Week Two Material
H. Rountree and T.
Davidson, Eastern Shore Indians of Maryland and Virginia
July
9:
Field Trip
July
10:
- Charles Fithian, “A Good and Fruitful Land: Colonists, Archaelogy and
the Environment,” Outdoor Delaware (Fall 1994): 21-24.
-
J.L. Kirwan and H.H. Shugart, “Vegetation and two indices of fire on the
Delmarva Peninsula,” Journal of the Torrey Botanical Society 127, no. 1
(2000): 44-50.
-
Henry Miller, “Transforming a ‘Splendid and Delightsome Land’: Colonists
and Ecological Change in the Chesapeake 1607-1820,” Journal of the
Washington Academy of Sciences 76, no. 3 (September 1986): 173-187.
-
Jack Wennersten, “Soil Miners Redux: The Chesapeake Environment, 1680-1810,”
Maryland Historical Magazine 91, no. 2 (Summer 1996): 157-179.
-
Allan Kulikoff, “Households and Markets: Toward a New Synthesis of American
Agrarian History,” The William and Mary Quarterly 50, no. 2 (April
1993): 342-355.
July
15:
Reaction Due for Week Three Material
Robert Grumet, Bay,
Plain and Piedmont: A Landscape History of the Chesapeake Heartland from 1.3
Billion Years Ago to 2000 – available on the class website.
July
16: Field Trip
July
17: This
website is broken down into 13 chapters. Become familiar with the
organization of the material, but you are only required to read chapters 2, 4,
5, 6, 7, 11, and 12. Unfortunately, all of the visual images (maps, photographs,
etc) are not translating onto the website at the moment - so please excuse blank
spaces and formatting problems.
Exploring the Chesapeake’s Forgotten River: Perspectives on
the Wicomico
July
22:
Reaction Due for Week Four Material
Boyd Gibbons, Wye
Island
July
23: Field Trip
July
24: Student Research Presentations –
readings as given on July 17
Final Project due in class, July 24