NYU GALLATIN SCHOOL OF INDIVIDUALIZED STUDY History of Ecology and IDSEM­UG 1892 Fall 2016 Tuesday and Thursday, 3:30­4:45 Silver Center Room 407

Instructor: Prof. Peder Anker E­mail: [email protected] Office hours: Tuesdays, 9:30­11:30 Office: 1 Washington pl. room 425

Course Description This course traces the history of ecology and environmentalism from Charles Darwin to current affairs. The global history of ecological concern stays at the center of this course, which discusses environmental worries in the British, German, Scandinavian, African and American contexts in subsequent centuries. The chief focus will be on U.S. experience in trying to deal with organizing nature, environmental preservation and conservation, population growth, environmental design and global warming, among other issues. Various ecological understandings of human philosophy, race, gender, religion, architecture, politics, and economy will be subject to critical discussion.

Papers and assignments There will be a 12 page midterm paper due October 13 and a 12 page final paper due December 15. Both papers must focus on at least one of the primary sources discussed in class.

All students are expected to maintain the highest standard of academic integrity. Cheating and plagiarism are serious matters and will result in disciplinary action and course failure. For information on NYU's policy on academic integrity, visit: http://cas.nyu.edu/page/ academicintegrity

Grading and attendance Mandatory attendance 20% Course participation 40% Midterm paper 40 % Final paper

Books to borrow or buy: ​ Peder Anker, From Bauhaus to Ecohouse: A History of Ecological Design, (Baton Rouge: ​ ​ Louisiana State University Press, 2010). Richard Buckminster Fuller, Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth, any edition. ​ ​ , Silent Spring, any edition. ​ ​ Sharon E. Kingsland, The Evolution of American Ecology 1890­2000, (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins ​ ​ University Press, 2008), or later editions.

Barbara Ward and René Dubos, Only One Earth, any edition. ​ ​ Disability Disclosure Statement Academic accommodations are available to any student with a chronic, psychological, visual, mobility, learning disability, or who is deaf or hard of hearing. Students should please register with the Moses Center for Students with Disabilities at 212­998­4980. ​ ​ NYU's Henry and Lucy Moses Center for Students with Disabilities 726 Broadway, 2nd Floor New York, NY 10003­6675 Telephone: 212­998­ 4980 ​ Voice/TTY Fax: 212­995­ 4114 ​ Web site: http://www.nyu.edu/csd ​

Course Outline

Sept. 6 Tuesday: Introductory meeting

No readings

Sept. 8 Thursday: The New York Botanical Garden

Kingsland, The Evolution of American Ecology, 1­128. ​ ​

Sept. 13 Tuesday: The American Museum of Natural History

Donna Haraway, “Teddy Bear Patriarchy: Taxidermy in the Garden of Eden, New York City, 1908­1936,” Social Text, 11 (Winter, 1984­1985), 20­64. ​ ​ Theodor Roosevelt, mural quotes at the American Museum of Natural History.

Kingsland, The Evolution of American Ecology, 129­178. ​ ​ ​ ​ The Natural History Museum, “An Open Letter to Museums from Members of the ​ ​ ​ Scientific Community,” March 24, 2015. ​ Sept. 15 Thursday: Henry David Thoreau ​ ​ Henry David Thoreau, Walden, any edition. ​ ​ ​ Richard B. Primack, Walden Warming: Climate Change Comes to Thoreau’s ​ Woods (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014), ix­13. ​

Sept. 20 Tuesday: John Muir

John Muir, “A voice for wilderness,” (1901, 1912), in American Environmentalism, ​ ​ Roderick Frazier Nash (ed.), (New York: McGrew­Hill, 1990), 94­97.

Mark Dowie, Conservation Refugees: The Hundred­Year Conflict between Global ​ Conservation and Native Peoples, (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2009), 1­22. ​

Sept. 22 Thursday: British Ecology

Peder Anker, Imperial Ecology: Environmental Order in the British Empire, ​ 1895­1945, (Cambridge: Press, 2001), 196­244. ​ Arthur George Tansley, The Future Development and Functions of the Oxford ​ Department of Botany, Inaugural Lecture 22 November 1927, (Oxford: Clarendon ​ Press, 1927).

Herbert George Wells, Julian Huxley and G.P. Wells, ”The Science of Ecology,” ”Life Under control,” in The Science of Life (New York: Doubleday, Doran & ​ ​ Comp., 1931), Vol. II, 961­1032.

Sept. 27 Tuesday: South African Ecology

Peder Anker, “The Politics of Ecology in South Africa on the Radical Left,” Journal ​ ​ of the History of Biology 37 (2004), 301­331. ​ Jan Christian Smuts, “The Spirit of the Mountain” (1923), in Greater South Africa: ​ Plans for a Better World, (Johannesburg: The Truth Legion, 1940), 31­35. ​ John Phillips, “Man at the Cross­Roads,” in Our Changing World­View, ​ ​ Anonymous (ed.), (Johannesburg: University of the Witwatersrand Press, 1932), 51­70.

Jan Christian Smuts, “Preamble for the United Nations Charter,” draft, undated, one page.

Thomas Park, “Ecological Sociology,” Ecology 14 (1933), 318­319. ​ ​

Sept. 29 Thursday: Bauhaus of Nature

László Moholy­Nagy, “Why Bauhaus Education?” Shelter, March 1938, 6­21. ​ ​

Anker, From Bauhaus to Ecohouse, 1­36. ​ ​

Oct. 4 Tuesday: Nazi Ecology? ​ ​

Albert Ebner, German Forests: Treasures of a Nation (New York: German Library ​ ​ Information, 1940), entire.

Michael Imort, “’Eternal forest – eternal Volk’” in How Green were the Nazis? ​ ​ ​ Franz­Josef Brüggemeier (et.al. ed.), (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2005), 42­72.

Oct. 6 Thursday: Preservation: Ansel Adams

Ansel Adams, Born Free and Equal, (New York: U.S. Camera, 1944), entire. ​ ​

Documentary: Ric Burns, Ansel Adams, PBS 2002. ​ ​

Oct. 11 Tuesday: Conservation: Nature’s New Deal

Anker, From Bauhaus to Ecohouse, 37­67. ​ ​

Midterm papers due!

Oct. 13 Thursday: Cold War Ecology

Eugene Odum, Fundamentals of Ecology, (Philadelphia: Saunders, 1959), ​ ​ 452­496.

Stephen Bocking, “Ecosystems, Ecologists, and the Atom: Environmental Research at Oak Ridge National Laboratory”, Journal of the History of Biology, 28 ​ ​ (1995), 1­47.

Angela Creager, Life Atomic, (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2013), ​ ​ 351­393.

Oct. 18 Tuesday: Capturing Rachel Carson

Carson, Silent Spring, entire. ​ ​

Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway, Merchants of Doubt, (New York: ​ ​ Bloomsbury, 2010), 216­239.

Oct. 20 Thursday: Richard Buckminster Fuller ​ ​

Buckminster Fuller, Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth, entire. ​ ​

Anker, From Bauhaus to Ecohouse, 68­82. ​ ​

Oct. 25 Tuesday: Space Ecology

Stewart Brand (ed.), Space Colonies, (San Fransico: Waller Press, 1977) ​ ​

Antonio Ballester, Daniel B. Botkin, James Lovelock, Ramon Margalef, Lynn Margulis, Juan Oro, Rusty Schweikert, David Smith, T. Swain, John Todd, Nancy Todd and George M. Woodwell, “Ecological Considerations for Space Colonies,” Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America, 58: 1 (Mar., 1977), 2­4. ​

Anker, From Bauhaus to Ecohouse, 83­95. ​ ​

Oct. 27 Thursday: Design with Nature

Ian McHarg, Design with Nature, any edition. ​ ​

Betty Roszak, “Forward,” Nancy Jack Todd, “Introduction” and Jack Todd “A Modest Proposal,” in The Book of the New Alchemists, (New York: Dutton, 1977), ​ ​ vii­xviii.

Anker, From Bauhaus to Ecohouse, 96­131. ​ ​

Nov. 1 Tuesday: The Whole Earth

Stewart Brand (ed.), Whole Earth Catalog, 1968 edition. ​ ​ ​

Andrew G. Kirk, Counterculture Green: The Whole Earth Catalog and American ​ Environmentalism, (Lawrence: University Of Kansas Press, 2007), 1­42. ​

Nov. 3 Thursday: Limits to Growth

Donella H. Meadows, Dennis L. Meadows, Jørgen Randers, William W. Behrens III, The limits to growth: A report for the club of Rome’s project on the predicament ​ of mankind, (New York: A Potomack Associates Book, 1972), entire. ​

Jørgen Randers, “The Carrying Capacity of our Global Environment – A Look at the Ethical Alternatives,” Anticipation 8 (1971), 2­11, ​ ​

Nov. 8 Tuesday: Paul Ehrlich/Garret Hardin ​ ​

Garret Hardin, “Lifeboat Ethics: The Case Against Helping the Poor” Psychology ​ Today 8 (1974), 38­43, 123­126. ​

Paul Ehrlich, The Population Bomb, (New York: Ballantine Books, 1969), 5­57. ​ ​

Nov. 10 Thursday: Worldly Environmentalism

World Commission on Environment and Development, Our Common Future, ​ ​ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), entire.

Kingsland, The Evolution of American Ecology, 179­231. ​

Wikipedia, Expo’ 74. ​ ​

Nov. 15 Tuesday: Fearing the State

Brian Allen Drake, Loving Nature, Fearing the State, (Seattle: University of ​ ​ Washington Press, 2013), xii­18, 114­178. Including “Forward” by William Cronon.

Nov. 17 Thursday: The Love Canal

Richard Newman, Love Canal, 2016. ​ ​ Office of Public Health, Love Canal, 1978. ​ ​

Guest lecturer: Jeffrey Sachs, Sachs Policy Group ​ ​

Nov. 22 Tuesday: Machines of Loving Grace: Film

Adam Curtis, All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace, episode 2, “The ​ ​ Use and Abuse of Vegetational Concepts,” BBC, 2011.

Nov. 24 Thursday: Thanksgiving recess! No class.

Nov. 29 Tuesday: Ecological Aliens

Stanley Temple, “The Nasty Necessity: Eradicating Exotics,” Conservation ​ Biology 4 (June 1990), 113­115. ​

Banu Subramaniam, “The Aliens have Landed!” Meridians 2 (2002), 26­40. ​ ​

Dec. 1 Thursday: A Global History of Ecology in Norway

Arne Næss as “The shallow and the deep, long­range ecology movements: A summary,” Inquiry, 16 (1973), 95­100. ​ ​

Dec. 6 Tuesday: Responding to Global Warming

George M. Woodwell (et.al.) The Carbon Dioxide Problem, report, July 1979. ​ ​

Philip Shabecoff, “U.S. Study Warns of Extensive Problems from Carbon Dioxide Pollution,” New York Times, p. A13. ​ ​

Council on Environmental Quality, “Global Energy Futures and the Carbon Dioxide Problem,” Report to the President, January 1981.

James Fleming, “The Climate Engineers,” The Wilson Quarterly (Spring 2007), ​ ​ 46­60.

Zadie Smith, “Elegy for a Country’s Seasons,” New York Review of Books, April 3, ​ ​ 2014.

Daniel Smith, “It’s the end of the world as we know it,” The New York Times ​ Magazine, April 17, 2014. ​

Dec. 8 Thursday: Capitalism vs. Climate

Naomi Klein, This Changes Everything, (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2014), ​ ​ 1­95.

Mike Hulme, “Why fossil fuel divestment is a misguided tactic,” The Guardian, ​ ​ ​ April 17, 2015. ​

Fossil Fuel Divestment Working Group, “Report of the Fossil Fuel Divestment ​ Working Group,” The Financial Affairs Committee of the University Senate, NYU, ​ March 26, 2015.

Dec. 13 Tuesday: Legislative day (no class)

Dec. 15 Thursday: The End of Ecology

Kingsland, The Evolution of American Ecology, 233­267. ​

Final paper due!