ENGLISH 841: VISIONS OF SUSTAINABILITY:
Dr. David S. Shields, McClintock Professor of Southern Letters Welsh 207
Wednesday 5:30-8:00 Humanities 308.
The dominant form of utopian aspiration in the West in the past twenty years has proceeded from a desire for sustainability—the enduring maintenance of resources, economic opportunities, and cultural values. This seminar—reflecting the campus-wide concern for “Environment and Sustainability”—explores the intellectual history and literary figurations of sustainability in western writing from Malthus to current theorists of sustainable agriculture, such as Miguel Altieri and Gordon Conway. The particular focus of this seminar will be food and agriculture, treating particularly attempts to imagine the right way to make use of nature’s bounty, order agriculture, and prepare food for people. Authors included: Wendell Berry, Rachel Carson, Aldo Leopold, James Madison, David W. Pierce, Michael Pollan, and Kenneth Kiple.
Class Policies & Writing Assignments will be discussed in a separate document. You will notice, however, that a student delivered book report will be a feature of each class session.
Required Texts:--I have chosen not to use the campus bookstore for texts this year because kindle and editions of books afford students ample savings. You may buy from any vendor you wish. For the sake of convenience I have linked to Amazon-
Wendell Berry, Bringing it to the Table: On Farming and Food
Miguel Altieri: Genetic Engineering in Agriculture
Michael Pollan:In Defense of Food
Pierre Desroucher & Hiroko Shimizu: The Locavore’s Dilemma
SCHEDULE OF SESSION TOPICS
August 29:Introduction. Sustainability as a concept in reaction to dystopia visions of economy and politics. Sustainability as a utopian aspiration, a collection of best practices. The first articulation of the ideal of sustainability in the World Council of Churches 1974 Conference "Science and Technology for Human Development, The Ambiguous Future -- The Christian Hope"
Work in a Sustainable Society:
September 5: A History of Catastrophes: Malthus & the runaway population. Read Chapters 1, 2, 17-19 of “An Essay on the Principle of Population”
Book Report: Mary Shelley, The Last Man.
The American Soil crisis: James Madison, Address to the Agricultural Society of Albemarle Virginia (pp. 63-92) William Rives, Letters of James Madison:
September 12: Faith in the machine. Thomas Carlyle “The Mechanical Age”
Andrew Ure: “The Philosophy of the Manufacturers”
Book Report: Andrew Carnegie, The Gospel of Wealth
John M. Sherwood “Engels, Marx, Malthus, and the Machine,” The American Historical Review 1985—available on campus via library electronic subscription
September 19: The Threat to the Wild. John Muir and Preservation:
Book Report: John Muir & the Mountains of Califoria
John Muir, Our National Parks, Chapters 1 & 10:
Gifford Pinchot & Conservationism. Pinchot: The Fight for Conservation:
Choose from either chapter 6, 7, or 8
September 26: The Emergence of Ecology. Book Report: Also Leopold, A Sand County Almanac. E. P. Odum, The Emergence of Ecology as a New Integrative Discipline, Science 25, (March 1977).
Tansley & the idea of Ecosystem—William S. Currie, “Units of Nature or Processes across scales? The ecosystem concept at age 75” New Phytologist 190, 1 (April 2011):
October 3: Rachel Carson, the Prophet. Book Report: Silent Spring.
Bill Moyer’s Journal: Rachel Carson’s Legacy, a Play: . “Rachel Carson and the Awakening Environmental Consciousness. The enduring counter-attack: J. G. Edwards, “The Lies of Rachel Carson”
October 10Wendell Berry and the Critique of Industrial Agriculture:
Book Report: The Mad Farmer Poems. Bringing it to the Table [required text book—purchase link found above] Part 1. Part III “The Pleasures of Eating”
October 17: The World Conservation Strategy 1980 & the emergence of the ideal of “sustainable development.” The global economic context.
Book Report: Gioconda Belli, Waslala[in Spanish]
October 24: Green Revolution & Plant Breeding. “The Green Revolution-video overview”
A dissenting view: Miguel Altieri, Genetic Engineering in Agriculture [required
Textbook. Link for purchase above.”
Book Report: John H. Perkins, Geopolitics and the Green Revolution.
October 31: Industrial Agriculture & Global Food Systems. “Monsanto—A Sustainable Agricultural Company” The Feed the Future Initiative:
Agriculture & the Hungry Thirsy Needy Puzzle
Beyond Food & Fuel—The Role of 21st Century Agriculture
Book Report: Peter Pringle, Food, Inc. Mendel to Monsanto
November 7: The Locavore Movement and the Critique of Big Food.
Michael Pollan: In Defense of Food [required text linked above]
Book Report: Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Vegetable, Miracle
Book Report: Book Report, Gary Nabhan, Coming Home to Eat, The Pleasures and Politics of Local Foods, 2001
November 14: Global versus local: Pierre Desroucher & Hiroko Shimizu: The Locavore’s Dilemma [required text, purchase link noted above.
Book Report: Kenneth F. Kiple: Feast, Ten Centuries of Food Globalization
November 28 Green Economy: Book Report: David Pierce, The Blueprint for a Green Economy. World Conservation Union, “The Economic Value of Biodiversity,”
Exploring the Global Green Economy: Climate, Governance, efficiency:
December 5: Exploring the U. S. Governmental Visions of Sustainability.
1. The Environmental Protection Agency
2. The U. S. Department of Agriculture