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REFLECTIONS
RECENTERING NORTH AMERICAN ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY:
pedagogy
AND SCHOLARSHIP IN THE GREAT LAKES REGION
JAMES FELDMAN AND LYNNE HEASLEY
ABSTRACT
We lay out a rationale for a new scholarly subfield—the environmental history of the Great Lakes—that Canadian and U.S. scholars can develop together. This project began as an attempt to teach environmental history in a way that stressed the importance of our region to our Wisconsin- and Michigan-based students. But classroom experiences convinced us that Great Lakes environmental history has been neglected, both because of its transnational character and because of biases within the field of environmental history. The Great Lakes have important stories to tell. They are at once representative of the larger narratives of both the United States and Canada, and also demonstrate the exceptional history of each nation. They provide an opportunity to explore comparative and transnational history. The Great Lakes also are fundamentally important in their own right for their industries, environments, and abundant resources.
| IN 2005, WE RECEIVED a Canadian Studies grant from the Canadian government to transform our United States environmental history courses into a more explicitly North American course with a special emphasis on the Great Lakes region. Both our research and our teaching lie within the boundaries of one of the world's most prominent geological features—in satellite images of North America, the Great Lakes basin inevitably attracts the eye. Moreover, the lakes serve as the primary environmental and recreational touchstones for our Wisconsin- and Michigan-based students. We wanted to design a course that was at once transnational and regional. We also thought that faculty in other regions could adapt our nested model of the survey—regional history embedded within a larger North American panorama. While we were revising our courses, however, we saw the need for a more coherent regional history of the Great Lakes. In this article, we lay out the rationale for a new scholarly subfield that Canadian and U.S. scholars can develop together. |
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Integrating Canadian and U.S. environmental history by taking the Great Lakes region as a unifying frame of reference suggests new avenues for historical scholarship. These, in turn, can unite Canadian and U.S. scholars in a shared transnational project. The environmental histories of both nations are connected in intricate ways. Each nation lies within an international mosaic of geography, politics, economy, and culture, a mosaic shaped in profound ways by environmental patterns and processes of the Great Lakes watershed. Consider, for example: the Middle Ground, where the intersecting dynamics of cultural contact, imperial politics, and the international beaver trade converged; the transportation network made up of the Erie and Welland Canals and the St. Lawrence Seaway that opened the mid-continent and connected it with eastern and European ports; the development of Niagara Falls for hydropower and industrial tourism; the Great Lakes forest cutover, which fueled westward growth and urbanization; the rise of modern environmentalism in response to industrial pollution from chemical, steel, and auto industries; and binational negotiations over Great Lakes water policy.1 |
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Despite the critical role of the Great Lakes in the history of North America, environmental historians have largely neglected the region. This is partly because of patterns of scholarship in U.S. environmental history, and partly because the boundaries of the Great Lakes are transnational. The region does not fit within conventional narrative frames of U.S. environmental history or within the growing field of Canadian environmental history. As a result, the Great Lakes have not attracted systematic attention from Canadian or U.S. scholars. |
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