Forest/ENV/History 452:

World  Forest History

Professor Nancy Langston

University of Wisconsin-Madison

Fall 2006

Class schedule

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Class SCHEDULE

 

Registered UW students may download the articles from mywebspace at

https://mywebspace.wisc.edu/xythoswfs/webui/_xy-8218834_1-t_A6iBbumj

Sept 6 Week 1: world forest history 

Nancy Langston, “Reflections on teaching world forest history,”  Environmental History 10(2005) http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/eh/10.1/langston.html

 

Read this before the first class, if you get a chance.  Otherwise, read it before the next week’s meeting.

 

Sept 13 Week 2: Linking ecology and history

 

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

 

Sept 20 Week 3: Linking ecology, history, and policy

 

SPECIAL CLASS MEETING: GO TO Brian Donahue’s lecture Monday Sept 17th, 5:30 pm.  Grad students should also do their best to make it to the environmental history colloquium on Tuesday Sept 18th, 12 noon, Memorial Union, or to the pizza lunch Monday at noon in Russell Labs. The Wednesday class will meet for half the usual time.

 

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

 

Brian Donahue et al 2005,  Wildlands and Woodlands, report from the Harvard Forest, selections:

http://harvardforest.fas.harvard.edu/wandw/HF_wandw.pdf#search=%22brian%20donahue%20wildlands%20wild%20forests%22

For an overview of the report, see http://harvardforest.fas.harvard.edu/protection/wandw.html

 

Sept 27  Week 4:  forests, history, and conservation

All can be downloaded from http://harvardforest.fas.harvard.edu/publications/pdfbyyear.html

 

Foster, D. R., F. Swanson, J. D. Aber, I. Burke, N. Brokaw, D. Tilman, and A. Knapp. 2003. The Importance of Land-Use Legacies to Ecology and Conservation. BioScience 53: 77-88.

Bellemare, J. M. G. and D. Foster. 2002. Legacies of the agricultural past in the forested present: an assessment of historical land-use effects on rich mesic forests.Journal of Biogeography 29: 1401-1420.

Berlik, M. M., D. B. Kittredge, and D. R. Foster. 2002. The illusion of preservation: a global environmental argument for the local production of natural resources.Journal of Biogeography 29: 1557-1568.

 

Foster, D., S. Clayden, D. A. Orwig, B. Hall, and S. Barry. 2002. Oak, chestnut and fire: climatic and cultural controls of long-term forest dynamics in New England.Journal of Biogeography 29: 1359-1379.

 

Foster, D. R. 2002. Conservation issues and approaches for dynamic cultural landscapes..Journal of Biogeography 29: 1533-1535.

Foster, D. R. 2002. Insights from historical geography to ecology and conservation: lessons from the New England landscape..Journal of Biogeography 29: 1269-1275.

Foster, D. R. 2002. Thoreau's country: a historical-ecological approach to conservation of the New England landscape..Journal of Biogeography 29: 1537-1555.

 

 

Oct 4  Week 5:  forests and the power of the state

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

 

Oct 11 Week 6: forests and cultural imaginations

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

 

Oct 18  Week 7:  forests and cultural imaginations

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

  

Oct 25 Week 9:  forests and power in Africa   

Thaddeus Sunseri, “Reinterpreting a colonial rebellion: forestry and social control in German East Africa, 1874-1915.” Environmental History 8 (July 2003): 431-451. http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/eh/8.3/

Karen Brown, “The Conservation and Utilisation of the Natural World: Silviculture in the Cape Colony, c. 1902-1910,” Environment and History 7(2001): 427-447.  

FAIRHEAD AND MELISSA LEACH, “Webs of Power: Forest Loss in Guinea,” online seminar essay. 

Nov 1 Week 10:  Mexican forests 

Wednesday: Andrew S. Mathews, “Suppressing Fire and Memory: Environmental Degradation and Political Restoration in the Sierra Juarez of Oaxaca, 1887-2001,” Environmental History 8(2003): 77-108.

http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/eh/8.1/mathews.html

 

 David Barton Bray and Peter Klepeis, “Deforestation, Forest Transitions, and Institutions for Sustainability in Southeastern Mexico, 1900-2000,” Environment and History 11(2005): 194-223

 

Nov 8  Week 11:  Amazonian Rainforests

Charles Mann, 1491, The Atlantic Monthly March 2002

Susanna Hecht and Alexander Cockburn, The Fate of the Forest: Developers, Destroyers and Defenders of the Amazon (NY: Perennial 1990); selections 

Nov 15  Week 12:  forest science, power, and communities in Asia 

David Biggs, “Managing a rebel landscape: CONSERVATION, PIONEERS, AND THE REVOLUTIONARY PAST IN THE U MINH FOREST, VIETNAM,” Envt History July 2005 10.3 448-476  http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/eh/10.3/biggs.html

Peter Vandergeest and Nancy Lee Peluso, “Empires of Forestry: Professional Forestry and State Power in Southeast Asia, Part 1” Environment and History 12(2006): 31-64  http://www.erica.demon.co.uk/EH/EH1202.html

Ramachandra Guha, “The prehistory of community forestry in India,” Environmental History. Durham: Apr 2001.Vol. 6, Iss. 2;  pg. 213

Nov 22 Week 13:  Thanksgiving week. Video on first nations forests

 

Nov 29 Week 14:  global transformations

Patricia Marchak, Logging the Globe selections

 

Dec 6  Week 15:  paper presentations

 

Dec 13 Week 16: paper presentations