So Glorious a Landscape: Nature and the Environment in American History and Culture

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Rowman & Littlefield, 2002 - 301 pages
So Glorious a Landscape: Nature and the Environment in American History and Culture surveys the vast and interdisciplinary subject of American natural and environmental studies. It examines the literary landscape that has inspired a local, regional, and national sense of place; explores the dynamic meaning and significance of nature across time, place, culture, and gender; and looks at the essence and history of environmental change.

The first all-encompassing introductory survey of environ-mental history and cultural studies, this volume provides students and scholars with carefully chosen selections from major essayists, naturalists, preachers, geographers, novelists, scientists, and historians whose works have shaped the fields of literary ecology and environmental history. The essays trace the changing American landscape and ideas about nature from the seventeenth century to the present.

By analyzing a range of material, So Glorious a Landscape provides a fresh perspective on what nature is in American life, what forces have shaped its profound place and changing definition, and what the work of environmental historians tells about the relationship of nature, culture, and power in America. So Glorious a Landscape is an excellent resource for courses in American studies, environmental history, and American culture.

 

Contents

Acoma Pueblo Creation Myth
20
Tewa Sky Looms
23
A Hideous and Desolate Wilderness 1647 WILLIAM BRADFORD
24
Potential of the New English Canaan 1632 THOMAS MORTON
27
Fate of the Abenaki in the Colonial Ecological Revolution CAROLYN MERCHANT
31
The Northwest Ordinance 1787
39
The Untransacted Destiny of the American People 1846 WILLIAM GILPIN
43
Americans Spread All Over California 1846 MONTEREY CALIFORNIAN
45
Human Ecology and the Habits of Sanitation in the Modern Urban Environment 1907 ELLEN SWALLOW RICHARDS
142
LandUse Ethics and Economic SelfInterest 1949 ALDO LEOPOLD
145
Power and Place The Meeting of Social and Environmental History
151
Alice Hamilton Explores the Dangerous Trades ROBERT GOTTLIEB
172
Preserving the Hallowed Ground of Dinosaur National Monument 1954DAVID BROWER
178
The Rape of the Appalachians 1962 HARRY M CAUDILL
181
What Happened at Love Canal 1982 LOIS GIBBS
190
The Origins of the Environmental Justice Movement 1997 EILEEN MAURA McGURTY
198

Social and Environmental Degradation in the California Gold Country 1890 JOAQUIN MILLER
46
The Soreness of the Land 1925 WINTU INDIAN KATE LUCKIE
50
Natures Nation The American Landscape and the Nature Writing Tradition
53
Where I Lived and What I Lived For 1854 HENRY DAVID THOREAU
74
My First Summer in the Sierra 1868 JOHN MUIR
80
Spring at the Capital 1871 JOHN BURROUGHS
84
The Land of Little Rain 1903 MARY AUSTIN
92
The Present at Tinker Creek 1974 ANNIE DILLARD
96
Nature and the Emergence of an Ecological Ethic
103
The Animal Creation and the Importance of Ephemera 1791 WIILIAM BARTRAM
130
The Destructive ness of Man 1864 GEORGE PERKINS MARSH
136
The Environ mental Era Responses to Nature in Distress
217
Passenger Pigeons 1949 ROBINSON JEFFERS
245
The Historic Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis 1967 LYNN WHITE JR
248
Polemic Industrial Tour ism and the National Parks 1968 EDWARD ABBEY
256
The Fate of All Living Things 1977 LESLIE MARMON SILKO
267
The National Environmental Policy Act
271
Population and Global Economic Patterns 1990 LAWRENCE W LIBBY AND RODNEY L CLOUSER
275
Wise Use What Do We Believe? 1996RON ARNOLD
279
Women and Ecology 1988 ANDREE COLLARD WITH JOYCE CONTRUCCI
286
FURTHER READING
291
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