The Making of the Modern American Landscape-Writing-Intensive Seminar

3 units

This writing intensive seminar explores environmental change in relation to human actions in the United States. It provides a vision of American history from the perspective of the land itself. It traces transformations in the organization and uses of landed property from the eighteenth century surveys of western lands: through the expansion of slavery and the cotton kingdom; the construction of irrigation systems in the west; the emergence of new technologies of production and communication in nineteenth century cities to the mass production of surburban housing; and finally to the rise of Disneyland and Las Vegas.