This course will explore the shared history of people and forests around the world, paying special attention to the ways history can help us understand current environmental issues.  We will examine how and why forests have changed over time, how different peoples have used or abused the forest, how societies have struggled to establish policies governing forests, and how perceptions of forests have evolved.  With its attention to the changing relationships between nature, culture, and production, forest history offers a powerful tool for understanding human effects on the forest. Topics for discussion will include:

* How and why have forests changed? How have those changes affected wildlife and people?

* Who has historically had access to forests? Who has been denied access, and why? How did access change with the development of forest industries, federal forestry programs, and environmental protections? 

* Whose meanings of the forest have defined the use of the forests?

* How have societal conflicts shaped the ways scientific research has been translated into forest policy?  What have been the effects on the forests and people? 

*What can forest history contribute to environmental policy?

Forest history is a central genre in environmental history, an emerging field which focuses on the cultural, economic and ecological  processes shaping society and the environment over time.  But environmental history is more than just an academic endeavor; it is the sum of our human connections with the non-human world over millennia.  Humans have always had profound connections to the world's forests. Yet resource managers, scientists, and social scientists often overlook the consequences of our many forest histories for environmental policy and management. All resource managers make assumptions about history that guide their work; but their assumptions are usually implicit rather than explicit.  Thus while our forest history affects what we do in the forest today, forest history as a field offers us ways of examining our own underlying assumptions about the human role in landscape change.

CLASS FORMAT

The first 45 minutes of each meeting will consist of a lecture and discussion introducing the historic context of the reading. After a brief break,  two students will spend 10-15  minutes discussing the critical questions  the week's readings raised for you, and then leading a discussion.  Ideally, you would summarize for all of us the perspective from which you approached the readings, then follow with your assessment of the authors' work.  

Attendance policy. Discussions will only work if everyone makes a good faith effort to keep up with the readings and comes to class on time and ready to talk.    Attendance is required; each unexcused absence will take half a grade off your final course grade (ie, two absences would drop you from an AB to a B).  If you know you're going to have an unavoidable conflict with a class meeting (for example, because of a field trip for another class or a job interview), please let me know as soon as possible.  If you miss class because of illness or an unavoidable conflict, you can make up the missed credit by turning in an extra 2 page essay on any aspect of the reading.  This essay will be due no later two class meetings after your missed meeting. 

THE READINGS

You have a lot of reading to do over the semester, and some of you may find the length of the reading daunting.  We’ll  talk in class about different strategies for reading books and journal articles.  You will not be required to read all of most books, so make sure you check your emails for the specific pages to focus on each week. The important thing to remember is that this seminar is not fact-based.  You will not be reading in order to memorize specific names, dates, events, scientific phenomena, and so on.  You won't be tested on details.  Instead, I  want you to absorb ideas, to identify themes and debates, to look critically at the evidence, and to consider the implications of any given book or article.

Leading Discussions

Twice during the semester you will be responsible (with another student) for leading discussions during the second half of class.  You will summarize for us the perspective from which you approached the readings, raise the critical questions the reading presents,  and lead a discussion.  During the two weeks you lead discussion, you will also prepare short essays.

Short Essays

Five times over the course of the semester you will be required to write a two page essay on the reading and turn it in at the weekly meeting at which we discuss that  readings.  You can choose which 5 weeks you wish to respond to, but two of them must include the weeks you lead discussion.  Your short essays will  essentially follow the format of published book reviews: you will briefly summarize the author’s goals, then explore several critical questions raised by the work, and finally assess how well the author met his or her goals.

RESEARCH PAPER

You will write a 10-15 page paper (double-spaced, 1 inch margins, 12 pt font size, 2500 to 3500 words) narrating the forest history of some particular place. While the content of your forest history will depend entirely on your research needs or personal interests, I do want to see an integration of approaches.  The most obvious example of such an integration would be an ecological and social history, where you explain how a place got to be the way it is (and why it is important).  Other examples might be the impact of competing values in forestry on a place, or the role of forest institutions in shaping forest landscapes.  Your papers should address the importance of forest history in grappling with real-world problems. 

This paper must be structured as a historical narrative. This means you will tell a story, rather than write a conventional scientific or social-scientific paper.  While putting together a narrative may frustrate some of you, it is a central feature of environmental history.  Many of you will enjoy the creative freedom you gain in escaping the typical academic format, with its mechanical structure (Introduction, Methods, Analysis, Discussion, Conclusion). 

Rough drafts.  Two weeks before the final paper is due, you'll submit a rough draft for the professor and two fellow students to comment on.  These drafts will not be graded, but they will offer you an opportunity to strengthen your own writing and to help your classmates improve theirs.  Many people are reluctant to show peers their work until it achieves some arbitrary level of perfection.  But this is a difficult and isolating way to work, especially because some of your best ideas will come from conversations you have with colleagues.  Moreover, people you trust will catch problems early on, long before you offer your work to a public audience, a graduate committee, or anonymous journal reviewers.  At the same time, we will all discover the tremendous range of ideas to be found in one small group.

GRADES

Discussion participation: 30%

Reading responses: 20%

Discussion leading: 10%

Research Paper:  40%

Books: all are available at Underground Textbooks, University Bookstore, and amazon.com (often for a substantial discount). 

Emily W. B. Russell, People and the Land Through Time: Linking Ecology and History  (Yale UP, 1998)

James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed   (Yale UP 1999) 

 

Robert Pogue Harrison, Forests: The Shadow of Civilization  (U of Chicago Press, 1993) .

Charles Mann, 1491:  New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus  Out in paper at the end of October.

Patricia Marchak. LOGGING THE GLOBE. Montreal (Quebec) and Kingston (Ontario): McGill-Queen's University Press. 1995.

            Brian Donahue, Reclaiming the Commons: Community Farms and Forests in a New England Town.  Yale University Press, 1999

Instead of a course packet, all the articles are available on-line ( for free, since you are UW students). I will email the citations and links to you, and post them on the course website. You can print them out, or simply download them to your own computer.  Photocopying and copyright permissions costs have gotten so high that preparing a standard reader would have cost you about $45.