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DAMMING THE AMERICAN IMAGINATION A Dissertation Submitted to the Temple University Graduate Board In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY by Lucas J. Sheaffer May 2019 Examining Committee Members: Miles Orvell, Advisory Chair, English Susan Wells, English Sue-Im Lee, English Seth Bruggeman, External Member, History © Copyright 2019 by Lucas J. Sheaffer All Rights Reserved ii ABSTRACT This work intervenes in the complex relationship between the large-scale management and exploitation of water in the United States and its impact on the bioregional literary imagination in the Tennessee Valley between 1933-1963. It shows through site-based environmental criticism and literary analysis that the “dam” becomes a material and symbolic place of convergence where one can examine the relationship between humans and their biospheres. As interdisciplinary rhetorical, literary, historical, archival and cultural analysis, this work engages writers such as David E. Lilienthal, William Bradford Huie, Robert Penn Warren, and Madison Jones in order to reveal the inherently conflicted realities of environmental conservation, individual identity, and displaced regional imaginations in American literature. iii To Ashley, Without your patience, support, perseverance, and love this work would not exist. To Lucy and Theo, may this be a testament of my love of nature & stories. I love you both to the moon and back again. iv “The night. The stars. The river.” ~Edward Abbey v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The creation of a dissertation is not a solitary endeavor. Throughout my educational journey I have been surrounded by a host of individuals who supported, encouraged, cajoled, and pushed me along the way. Much like an ecosystem, one’s work is never truly isolated and one is never truly alone. Each step in this journey was interconnected with a web of individuals who invested in my life in large and small ways. Now, as I arrive at this point of my journey, I am struck by the invaluable inheritance and companionship these individuals have given me. I hope this work is a testament to their voices in my life. First and foremost, the most significant person in my life deserves the deepest gratitude I can offer her. Ashley, beloved, you have sacrificed more than I can repay and provide unceasing support and encouragement in my darkest moments of self-doubt and frustration. I cannot be the person, teacher and scholar I want to be without your presence in my life. Thank you, thank you, and thank you again, Beautiful. Lucy and Theo, both of you became a part of my life while I have been writing this dissertation and continue to provide unending joy and laughter in the final stages of this project. Even now, I can hear your voices in our home as I compose these acknowledgements, I love you more than you will ever know. To my parents, thank you for instilling in me from a very young age the importance of the text and the great value of reading. Dad, thank you for teaching me to read closely and to pay attention to the words. Mom, thank you for taking me to the library week after week and allowing me to check out bag after bag of books. Reading continues to change my life. vi To my grandfather, Raymond, thank you for showing me an example of the quiet farmer. You continue to stand as the first and formative example of a steward who cares about the land in a very practical manner. Thank you to the long lineage of educators that came alongside a first-generation college student and walked with me for differnt portions of this road as I discerned my way through my vocational journey. Crystal Downing, thank you for the C+ on my first college essay in “Introduction to English;” it became the catalyst for a life-long challenge. Samuel Smith, thank you for showing me the value of my rural upbringing and sensibilities. To my Oxford University tutor Astrid Wind, thank you for the most challenging semester of college and encouraging me to consider the life of the mind as a vocation. Above all, thank you Paul Nisly. I am forever indebted to you for your mentorship as an undergraduate and to your friendship now. Glen Mazis, Charles Kupfer, and Peter Kareithi, thank you for your mentorship and friendship as I engaged with the interdisciplinary studies of French phenomenological philosophy, American studies, and Marxist material criticism at Penn State, Capital Campus. After working with me on Wendell Berry’s fiction and philosophical outlook, each of you demanded I complete a doctoral program and this dissertation is evidence of your foresight. Thank you. This host of educators is not complete without the numerous Temple University faculty who continue to contribute to my academic and teaching life. Eli Goldblatt and Rachel Groner, thank you for the countless conversations about excellent teaching and the value of student lives in the classroom. Sue-Im Lee and Susan Wells, thank you for your courses and consistent willingness to stay with me through the end of the journey. vii Seth Bruggeman, thank you for your willingness to join this project at its conclusion as a an outside reader. Finally, Miles Orvell, it is with the deepest gratitude that I recognize your constant and unwavering support of my academic work and career. This dissertation is evidence of your thoughtful critique and the high value you place on interdisciplinary work. Thank you, as well, to Shawn Schurr and the College of Liberal Arts for providing travel funds to attend conferences in Boston and San Francisco, so I might present portions of this work. To Petra Goedde and all of the fellows from my time as an Advanced Graduate Scholar in the Center for Humanties at Temple, thank you for the conversations and feedback on my work. Thank you to the Princeton University Friends of the Library Research Grant and the librarians of the Seely G. Mudd Public Policy Library who provided funds for a week in the David E. Lilienthal Papers, and patiently answered all my archival questions. Thank you to Zachary Vernon and the editors at Louisiana State University Press for including a version of “Refrigerators, Mosquitoes and Phosphates: the Environmental Rhetoric of David E. Lilienthal” in a forthcoming edited collection on environmental criticism and southern studies. Nathaniel Racine, Ted Howell, Colleen Kropp and Tiffany DeRewall, thank you for your friendship and conversations throughout our work at Temple University. Thank you to Devin Manzullo-Thomas, Brandon Hoover, Jim LaGrand, Kerry Hasler-Brooks, Robin Lauermann, Christine Perrin, Cynthia Wells, Pete Powers, and so many other colleagues at Messiah College that consistently asked questions and offered encouragement. Finally, while courses and dissertation come to an end, deep and abiding friendships remain. Jordan Windholz, Craig Dalen, and Alfred Siha, our friendships are viii some my most treasured relationships and thank you for your steadfast resolve that I complete this task as it kept me moving when I wanted to stop. ix TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ABSTRACT .................................................................................................................. iii DEDICATION ............................................................................................................... iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .............................................................................................. vi CHAPTERS 1. INTRODUCTION..................................................................................................... 1 2. REFRIGERATORS, MOSQUITOES, AND PHOSPHATES: THE ENVIRONMENTAL RHETORIC OF DAVID E. LILIENTHAL ........................... 26 3. THE STYMIED RIVER: WILLIAM BRADFORD HUIE’S MUD ON THE STARS ..................................................................................................................... 67 4. THE DISPLACED IMAGINATION: ROBERT PENN WARREN’S FLOOD: A ROMANCE OF OUR TIME ............................................................................... 111 5. THE OLD CORD SLASHED IN TWO: MADISON JONES’S A BURIED LAND .................................................................................................................... 152 6. CONCLUSION: IMAGINING RESISTANCE IN EDWARD ABBEY, WALLACE STEGNER, AND WENDELL BERRY ............................................. 189 BIBLIOGRAPHY ....................................................................................................... 204 x CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION That man is, in fact, only a member of a biotic team is shown by an ecological interpretation of history. Many historical events, hitherto explained solely in terms of human enterprise, were actually biotic interactions between people and land. The characters of the land determined the facts quite as potently as the characteristics of the men who lived on it. Aldo Leopold, “The Land Ethic” In one of many prescient moments in the 1955 volume Man’s Role in Changing the Face of the Earth, Luna Leopold posits near the end of his essay “Land Use and Sediment Yield” that “it is probable that long before the effects of [the natural operation of river mechanics in response to man’s changes in the watershed] can occur, river conditions will have been so altered by dams that [man] will be the primary factor in controlling river-channel characteristics” (646). This rather large collection—1193 pages—was the product of an international symposium including thinkers and scholars from multiple scientific and sociological disciplines. The purpose of the symposium and resultant text was to gain
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