Below is a basic list of readings for Hist 315/Enst 311. Please contact the instructor if you would like to see a complete syllabus.
Reading schedule
Week One: Introduction: What Is Environmental History?
- J. Donald Hughes, “Defining Environmental History” (2006)
- Donald Worster, “Nature and the Disorder of History.” Environmental History Review 18. No. 2 (1994): 1-15.
- William Cronon, “The Uses of Environmental History.” Environmental History Review 17, no. 3 (1993): 1-22.
Week Two: What is Communism? And, Creating a Sense of Place
- Marx & Engels, The Communist Manifesto. Excerpts.
Week Three: Ideology and Environment
- Lewis Hinchman and Sandra Hinchman, “Should Environmentalists Reject the Enlightenment?,” Review of Politics 64.4 (2001)
- Malthus, “On the principle of population,” Excerpts.
- Victor Ferkiss, “Marxist Socialism, Nature, and Technology,” in Nature, Technology and Society: The Cultural Roots of the Current Environmental Crisis (1993).
- Engels, introduction to Dialectics of Nature.
Week Four: The Soviet Union I
- Mark Bassin, “Geographical Determinism in Fin-de-siècle Marxism: Georgii Plakhanov and the Environmental Basis of Russian History,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 82.1 (1992).
- Brief excerpts from the writings of Lenin.
- Richard Stites, “Man the Machine,” Chapter 7 of Revolutionary Dreams (1989).
- Richard Stites, “Utopia in Space: City and Building,” Chapter 9 of Revolutionary Dreams (1989).
Week Five: The Soviet Union II: Policy and Practice
- Nikolai Dronin and Edward Bellinger, Climate Dependence and Food Problems in Russia, 1900-1990 (2005), excerpts.
- Murray Fleshbach and Alfred Friendly, Jr., Ecocide in the USSR: Health and Nature Under Siege (1992), excerpts.
- J. Donald Hughes, “Bryansnk: the aftermath of Chernobyl,” in An Environmental History of the World, 193-199 (2002).
Week Six: The Soviet Union III: Conservation and Representations
- Oleg Yanitsky, “Russian Environmental Movements,” in Jill Conway et al., eds., Earth, Air, Fire, Water (1999)
- Douglas Weiner, “Student Movements: Catalysts for a New Activism,” chapter 14 of A Little Corner of Freedom (1999) 312-339.
- Valentin Rasputin, one or more short stories. TBA.
Week Seven: Soviet Forced Labor & On to China
- Andy Bruno, “Industrial Life in a Limiting Landscape: An Environmental Interpretation of Stalinist Social Conditions in the Far North,” IRSH 55 (2010): 153-174.
- Judith Shapiro, Mao’s War Against Nature: Politics and the Environment in Revolutionary China (2001), excerpts.
- Mao Zedong, selections from speeches and writings
Week Eight: NO CLASS: SPRING VACATION
Week Nine: China II: Disasters and Possibilities
- Judith Shapiro, Mao’s War Against Nature: Politics and the Environment in Revolutionary China (2001), excerpts.
- Chen Gang, Politics of China’s Environmental Protection: Problems and Progress (2009), excerpts.
Week Ten: Cuba I: Before the Soviet collapse
- Fidel Castro, selections from speeches and writings.
- Che Guevara, selections from speeches and writings.
- Sergio Díaz-Biquets and Jorge Pérez-López, Conquering Nature: The Environmental Legacy of Socialism in Cuba (1999), excerpts.
Week Eleven: Cuba II: After the collapse
- Daniel Whittle and Orlando Rey Santos, “Protecting Cuba’s Environment” (2006)
- Sinan Koont, “The Urban Agriculture of Havana” (2009)
Week Twelve: Eastern Europe, before and after
- Raymond Dominick, “Capitalism, Communism and Environmental Protection: Lessons from the German Experience” (1998)
- Richard Caddell, “Nature Conservation in Estonia: From Soviet Union to European Union” (2009)
- Melissa Caldwell, Dacha Idylls: Living Organically in Russia’s Countryside (2011). Excerpts.
Week Thirteen: Marxist Environmentalism Today
- John Bellamy Foster, The Vulnerable Planet.
Week Fourteen: Sustainable Agriculture in Pennsylvania
- Judson Jerome, Families of Eden: Communes and the New Anarchism (1974). Excerpts.
- Michael Pollan, The Omnivore’s Dilemma. Excerpts.
