Across the Great Divide: Science, Humanities, and the American Landscape

The American landscape encompasses a diversity of built and natural environments. In this course, we will survey 200 years of history, using the tools of science and the humanities to understand how people have changed the landscape and how the landscape has shaped its human inhabitants. We will read historical, literary, and scientific works—and employ a variety of archival and aesthetic materials—to explore moments of transformation within four geographic regions: New England, the Midwest, the West, and the South. In so doing, we will arrive at an understanding of the interdependency of cultural and ecological history and the intersections between scientific and humanistic modes of inquiry. Readings will emphasize primary texts, and will include writings by Harriett Beecher Stowe, George Perkins Marsh, and photography by Dorothea Lange and others.