Brian Black | Thickening Our Stories: Models for Using Environmental History as Context | The History Teacher, 37.1

Thickening Our Stories: Models for Using Environmental History as Context

Brian Black
Penn State Altoona

IN ENVIRONMENTAL THOUGHT, there is the lyrical and the scientific. Students' hearts and minds may edge in one direction or the other depending on their career choice or educational background. In an environmental studies (ES) program, both perspectives are essential: the lyrical provides passion and spirit while the scientific, of course, enables students to see the world in its composite forms and systems. Between these two poles, fortunate ES programs may also have practical or applied perspectives from the social sciences, particularly in policy, geography, or sociology. More and more frequently, ES programs are looking for the discipline that will bring disparate perspectives together, allowing students to take from each sub-discipline and to apply interests to issues and events in the human past, possibly even with local relevance. In a variety of institutions, environmental historians have proven themselves to be indispensable in just this role—to thicken or deepen understanding from history and other fields.¹ I believe this development promises well-rounded ES education for students as well as a new opportunity for historians and history departments at a variety of institutions.

In my position at Penn State University, I teach ES students in core introductory, mid-level, and upper-level courses. As I teach our first full batch of graduates in this year's Senior Seminar, the chorus is clear: environmental history has played a distinct role in bringing coherence to their ES curricula. This is due less to my teaching antics than to the power of the stories at the core of my curriculum—particularly those drawn from the past. In this essay, I will briefly explain why I believe environmental history offers such an essential building block to the ES curriculum.²

First, historical context lets students know the legacy and implications of the environmental impulse as well as how ES as a line of inquiry has emerged as part of the academic/professional spectrum. Second, environmental history offers the opportunity to apply ES methods and approaches by exploring the texture of human events, particularly at the local level. Finally, by linking historical events or stories to larger ideas or patterns, environmental history transcends borders of nation, species, and self to create connections with other disciplines. In short, history situates and makes relevant all other environmental inquiry. Historical case studies—or stories—can be placed in front of students like laboratory experiments to dramatize concepts and laws learned in other courses. I have found in teaching courses with scientists that my historical stories provide additional meaning both to scientific data and to contemporary issues.

I began my own instruction in environmental history at the University of Kansas with influences such as Donald Worster, author of Dust Bowl, Nature's Economy, A River Running West, among other seminal titles. But it was my effort to become comfortable in a Kansas landscape very odd to my eastern sensibility that brought me to read PRAIRYERTH by William Least Heat-Moon. It was my reading of this work among the monogographs I studied to prepare for my oral and written exams that showed me how to tell stories of place in both my writing and teaching. Least Heat-Moon and others doing nature writing and cultural geography provide historians a wonderful template for telling stories. An emphasis on place integrates environmental history with other disciplines in an ES curriculum while also grounding ideas in real information about relevant people and events.

Least Heat-Moon begins PRAIRYERTH with a conundrum that instructs historians wishing to teach in ES. Finding himself with a full cabinet of researched facts, figures, and people, but lacking the thread that will stitch the quilt together, Least Heat-Moon writes:

Even when I got a detail down accurately, I couldn't hook it to the next without concocting theories. It was connections that deviled me. I was counting on a fact or image and not a thesis to hold my details together, and so I arrived at this question: should I just gather up items like creek pebbles into a bag and then let them tumble into their own pattern? Did I really want the reality of randomness? Answer: only if it would yield a landscape with figures, one that would unroll like a Chinese scroll painting or a bison-skin drawing where both beginnings and ends of an event are at once present in the conflated time of the American Indian. The least I hoped for was a topographic map of words that would open inch by inch to show its long miles.

The Importance of Context

We need to understand better how man has disturbed and displaced more and more of the organic world, has become in more and more regions the ecologic dominant, and has affected the course of organic evolution.

—Carl O. Sauer

Inspired by George Perkins Marsh, geographer Carl Sauer has inspired a whole new generation of inquiry that has been guided by the principle that human action must be understood within larger patterns and systems of life. Over the last few decades, history has learned from scientific inquiry and has greatly broadened the perspectives that organize the stories that it tells. This has enabled historian to become responsible for layering ES education.

At Penn State Altoona, the ES degree requirements were constructed with an interdisciplinary priority that blends quantitative and scientific approaches with those from the humanities. Students are required to take an introductory course titled "Visions of Nature," a team-taught methods course, a senior seminar, and, finally, a self- and faculty-guided intern-ship experience. In the natural sciences, students are required to take specific courses in biology, chemistry, geography, geo-science, and statistics. In the social sciences, ES requires that students take two courses in economics and one in political science. Finally, in the Arts and Humanities, students must take a course in nature writing, another in environmental philosophy, and at least one course in environmental history. These requirements are in addition to the General Education and Bachelor of Arts requirements that are intrinsic to all Penn State degrees.

Our ES curriculum seeks to prepare individuals to work in the environmental field. With this goal in mind, many colleagues tell me that the core responsibility of environmental history is to provide students with a firm foundation in the history of environmentalism. When our students go on to become environmental professionals, it is our courses in environmental history that offer the main opportunity to place their education and their own work within broader historical patterns. These patterns include the political, social, and intellectual contexts of what we now call the environmental movement. However, they also include establishing the roots of environmental history as it has evolved within the discipline of history. Environmental historians can offer ES students context from eras and events of general United States history while demonstrating the dynamic role that the environmental perspective has brought to the field of history in general. Primarily, environmental history provides the context of past events, eras and intellectual shifts to fields that often operate in a vacuum apart from broader ideas and patterns of human experience.

The Gateway, "Visions of Nature," course in our program at Penn State Altoona is organized around three extended field trips. This extremely popular course is intended to attract majors from other disciplines (it satisfies General Education credit) while also introducing concepts to ES majors who have already committed to their course of study. The course discusses the intellectual conceptions of nature in the United States and is always co-taught by a biologist and a humanist. The humanist role is filled by a historian or a literary scholar. Their specific duty in this course is to contextualize American intellectual shifts in the conception of nature. The biologist teaches basic concepts of environmental science, including the hydrological cycle, etc. This introductory course, in both its science and its humanities aspects, revels in the expansive layers that connect ES to disciplines throughout the university. It can not, however, approach information with any genuine detail.

My effort to fulfill my colleague's requests that I historicize the environmental movement occurs in my upper-level environmental history course. This course is modeled after Worster's at the University of Kansas, which was one of the nation's first survey courses of North American environmental history. In addition, I give priority to local stories and out-of-class experience by employing field trips that are organized as case studies.

Some of my case studies are designed to have students trace the evolution of the preservation ideal in the United States. One case study that I use each year is the Gettysburg National Military Park (GNMP). The familiarity of this site makes it an effective case study, even if one cannot travel to it. However, many other types of sites, particularly National Parks, are also useful. In the case of GNMP, preservationists from the Gettysburg community combined with veterans groups to establish a loosely defined preservation ideal for this space. With little additional thought to preservation, the Department of War took over the battlefield and used it for training exercises. During World War II, this space was even used for tank drills and POW camps. After 1950, strands of the modern environmental movement significantly influenced the expectations of the National Park Service (NPS) nationally, which had then taken over jurisdiction of the site in 1933.

By the 1980s, the NPS had begun a policy of ecological re-construction. This policy was implemented in the 1990s and now demonstrates shifting interpretations of the landscape. The debate over the meaning of preservation at this site offers a unique example of post-modern ideas of nature and sacred meaning.³ The NPS effort to manage this difficult cultural terrain provides a tremendous example for students to study the difficulties of administering a public site through the inevitable contestation that confronts it. During this case study, we examine concepts such as landscape revitalization and look at specific examples including white-tailed deer management. A case such as GNMP provides students with a great opportunity to study changes in environmental ethics while also providing experience with policy issues that may be of interest to students in their professional careers in the environmental field.

Fortunate ES programs also receive contributions from faculty in political science. However, such policy courses may effectively emphasize policy-making only if students have studied the history of the environmental movement. A case study such as Gettysburg uniquely demonstrates shifts in policy concerns at the federal level. However, an environmental history course might also include a standard chronology of twentieth century policy developments, including the progression of awareness in fields such as environmental health. Certainly, a trajectory that runs from the work of Alice Hamilton to the efforts of Clean Air and Water legislation and on through to the present, is needed to clarify the massive change in the use of scientific information to govern and construct policy. In addition studying policy initiatives under Reagan and George W. Bush, for instance, can enable students clearly to see that policy-making remains subject to the individual preferences of executives who believe the federal government should not concern itself with environmental issues.

The Importance of Texture

Many historical events, hitherto explained solely in terms of human enterprise, were actually biotic interactions between people and land. The characteristics of the land determined the facts quite as potently as the characteristics of the men [and women] who lived on it.

—Aldo Leopold

When Aldo Leopold, the conservation biologist and nature writer of the early 20^th century, called for "an ecological interpretation of history," I believe he was talking less directly to historians than to a need for environmental problems to be studied from many angles. In short, Leopold called for the formation of a field such as Environmental Studies.

A dynamic energy of interdisciplinary inquiry powers ES courses, particularly those that are team taught. However, such inquiry can also govern our use of history, if we lead students to apply fields such as ecology or anthropology. The application of these disciplines allows historical scholars to re-create past patterns of land use and the cultural values demonstrated by those patterns.⁴ The access to the "cultural texture" of the past dynamically alters the ability of ES students to apply new knowledge from other fields.

Leopold's ideas inspire environmental historians as they take a new look at past patterns of life. To see humans as "members of a biotic team" instead of as acting apart from nature requires that "use patterns" such as industrial development be scrutinized as systematic changes in culture. Most often, my teaching uses technological developments to provide students with a view of the ethics and values of previous human communities. This is partly due to my own desire to tie local stories and out-of-the-classroom experiences to environmental history. The mountainous region in which I teach helped to drive the industrial era in American history. From the Allegheny Mountains came a steady supply of lumber and coal, as well as the raw materials to manufacture iron and steel. In Central Pennsylvania, we know the texture of industry and its outcomes, particularly the effects of abandonment and pollution.

In Environmental Studies 100, we look for experiential trips that allow students to see the levels of Pennsylvania's industrialization. One of our most successful trips, for instance, involves an overnight trip to the Allegheny River area of Northwestern Pensylvania. With layers of change as our main topic, we canoe the Allegheny in order to visit an archaelogical dig at a Paleo-Indian site. We also visit the only tract of "original growth" forest in the state, which is included in the Allegheny National Forest. By considering a variety of eras, students gain a new appreciation of the depth of our region's connection to the land and industry. Early the next morning we hike the abandoned fields of the world's first oil-producing area outside of Titusville. Students touch well-heads from the 1860s boom and see the abandonment of towns, including the Pithole National Historic Site. Yet all around us on our hikes, we see a strong, second-growth forest that again forces us to consider nature's ability to recover from humans' abuses. Finally, we emerge into the modern, 20^th century with a tour of the Kinzua Hydroelectric dam. We hear perspectives from the Corps of Engineers as to why the dam was needed as well as that of the Seneca people who fought the dam's construction.

This Allegheny trip emphasizes layers of change over human history. While we discuss geography and ecology, it is environmental history that constructs the logic that frames the trip. Taken individually, each experience on the trip held important lessons. However, the continuity formed by grouping them into a larger excursion more effectively constructed an overall texture of change over time in Western Pennsylvania. Such an emphasis allows students to get to know their place in a way they never have before, and to know it in a fashion that they can utilize wherever they put their ES education to work.

Transcending Borders

"In hard times what makes survival possible and desirable is not its archeological identity but its ability to continue, and it continues because some structures, some institutions and facilities provide continuity. These are the landmarks, and they stand for continuity, community identity, for links with the past and the future. In the contemporary American community these roles are what counteract our mobility and fragmentation and forgetfulness of history."

—J.B. Jackson

Historians bristle when members of another field refer to the field's "forgetfulness." John Brinkerhoff Jackson, an observer of landscapes who helped to shape the field of landscape history, has spent his career unearthing landscape forms that historians and others have overlooked, from mobile homes to log cabins, and even has forced us to find meaning in sprawl. What has history forgotten in Jackson's mind? Jackson reminds us that history does not occur within a vacuum and should not be understood in that way. The best history locates connections and links to other ways of perceiving, to other disciplines. As Jackson points out, history can construct coherence and continuity by laying out the landmarks of a community, be it physical or intellectual.

Our experience at Penn State Altoona has shown us that creating a program on paper is one thing; it is quite another to create and maintain the integrated scope of an interdisciplinary degree. Each instructor and the field that he or she represents must bend somehow to accommodate this shared goal. However, I believe history possesses the most promise for making the interdisciplinarity smoother and the program more coherent. Or to use a different metaphor, history can be the grease that makes the program's gears turn most efficiently. A historical foundation can take the separate streams of independent knowledge and channel them in a single direction. In the best examples, history creates synergy not only in team taught courses, but potentially in the entire program.

Most ES programs are organized in a way that permits students' latitude in selecting their own emphasis while still maintaining intellectual rigor. While many B.A. degrees allow students to take courses in a variety of disciplines, ES requires it. Where can students have the opportunity to bring their knowledge from the earth sciences together with that from political science? Again, environmental history is one of the most helpful fields, providing students with a loosened structure of inquiry. This sometimes requires that courses be organized in a different fashion. I believe it also requires that historians remain flexible in responding to the tendencies of other fields, whether by influencing the sources that students are asked to consult or the type of notation they utilize in written papers. Without constraints of material or structured approaches, environmental history courses should allow students to independently pursue knowledge.

For instance, in my upper-level seminar on the environmental history of North America, students are urged to find a research topic in the American past that specifically uses the research methods that he or she prefers. Most of our work in class is intended to provide students with tastes of a variety of possible topics and approaches. I organize the course chronologically, with weekly discussion sessions on a theme or topic relevant to the material for that week. In one example, after reading the creation myths of Native cultures and contrasting them with the Judeo-Christian story of "Genesis," we have a panel discussion on whether or not Native peoples should be categorized as "environmentalists." First, of course, students must determine what exactly is meant by this term. A few weeks later, student groups are assigned a chronological era in Pennsylvania's history up to 1860. Each group conducts its own research in order to then provide the entire class a fifteen-minute report on land-use in Pennsylvania during a specific era. Students also perform a cost/ benefit analysis of New Deal initiatives in land-use. By the time we arrive at the last few weeks of class, the course has become predominantly policy-based. We have discussed specific policies at length and also introduced the role of non-government organizations. This provides students, many of whom would like to go into policy making, with a schematic of the process. As a final activity, the class is divided into interest groups on political figures and required to produce a brief position paper based on their chosen person's viewpoint on a specific issue. I used to perform Hetch Hetchy Redux and see if the Tuolumne River would again be dammed. In recent years, though, we have performed this role-playing activity for issues relating to drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve.

Over the last two years, I have also developed a new course that I hope will function as a historically-based course from which students will reach out in various directions of inquiry. Many of our students, who know the impacts of Pennsylvania industry well, may have little knowledge of the world beyond the Alleghenies. In introducing "History and Nature: Global Environmental History," I attempt to create a course that introduces students to historical approaches while prioritizing a view not biased by nation or species—very much the approach seen in science-based courses. This introductory-level course follows a general chronology of human existence by spotlighting co-evolution. With this emphasis, history becomes a dynamic interplay between land or natural resources and human culture.

In structuring the course, I look for patterns that link diverse cultures over time. One of the most effective is energy. Environmental history is uniquely suited to take this issue that students learn about in many of their ES issues and science courses and to use it to define culture difference. For instance, we study hydraulic societies as well as small scale coal-burning societies in order to see the increase in scale and scope made possible using different energy sources. Then we analyze energy use and consumption patterns in the 20^th century. Of course, this allows us to bring in contemporary issues and to give students an opportunity to more broadly consider issues from the news.

In this course, we also spend a great deal of time discussing the globalization of petroleum in the 20^th century before finally discussing global warming. In this single case study, students are given the opportunity to utilize information from a wide variety of fields. They are also able to see policy implications when we form a mock-United Nations to try and find compromises among diverse national perspectives. The texture of different applications and uses of energy creates a clearer perspective of past civilizations, as well as of our own usage patterns.

I believe the United Nations activity is particularly important for our students at Penn State Altoona. Most of them have not traveled outside of the United States and may never do so. This course may be their only opportunity to learn about everyday life in another nation. Therefore, part of the United Nations activity requires that the students learn about the nation their group will represent and create a cultural and culinary snapshot of it for the rest of us. These reports normally involve music, cuisine, and a general land-use description of the nation. At the festive general meeting that results, each group presents these snapshots while also presenting its position paper on the issue under consideration.

Conclusion

In my experience, the historical perspective has consistently provided an important foundation to students in ES. Historical inquiry brings context and texture to information intrinsic to every ES program. If environmental history is properly emphasized in the major's core courses, I believe it also can help to create synergy within the major that allows the major to transcend borders of discipline and self. In the model of Least Heat-Moon, environmental history provides the raw material to allow us to thicken the stories of environmental consequences and the lessons that substantiate the discipline. It is my hope that all ES programs will learn the value of emphasizing history in their curricula.

Notes

^1.� My comments are drawn from my own experience helping to establish ES programs at Gettysburg and Skidmore Colleges as well as most recently at Altoona College in the PSU system. Each institution possessed aspects of an ES program; PSU Altoona hired me to be one of the core faculty in the only ES program in the 80,000-student PSU system. Our program now has about 35 majors and is constructed on a foundation of core courses that are team-taught by scientists and humanists.

^2.� Of course, I apologize in advance for the simplification that is necessary for the goals of this essay. It is my hope that environmental history provides dynamic viewpoints to many different fields, within history as well as beyond it. This essay, however, explores only those connections to a representative Environmental Studies curriculum.

^3.� Readers may wish to see Uncommon Ground, William Cronon, ed., for further description of these intellectual shifts at the close of the twentieth century.

^4.� Obviously, cultural texture can be accomplished by instructors in a variety of fields, including anthropology, sociology, or geography. I believe the best environmental history teaching includes methodologies from these fields as a way of approaching past land use.

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