Technology and Change in Rural America

Readings

ses #	TOPICS	READINGS
1	Introduction	Film: Williams, Raymond. The Country and the City: A Film with Raymond Williams. 1979.
2	Geography and Destiny	Scott, James. Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999. ISBN: 9780300078152. Fitzgerald, Deborah. “Technology and Agriculture in 20th Century America.” In A Companion to American Technology. Edited by Carroll Pursell. Oxford: Blackwell, in press, 2005. ISBN: 9780631228448. Turner, Frederick Jackson. “The Significance of the Frontier in American History.” New York, NY: Dover Publications, 1996. ISBN: 9780486291673. Hofstadter, Richard. “The Agrarian Myth and Commercial Realities.” In The Age of Reform . New York, NY: Vintage, 1960. ISBN: 9780394700953.
3	Plants and Animals	Pollan, Michael. The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s Eye View of the World. New York, NY: Random House, 2002. ISBN: 9780375760396. Schrepfer, Susan, and Philip Scranton, eds. Industrializing Organisms: Introducing Evolutionary History. New York, NY: Routledge, 2003. ISBN: 9780415945486.
4	Land and Water	Worster, Donald. Rivers of Empire: Water, Aridity, and the Growth of the American West. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1987. ISBN: 9780394751610. ———. Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2004. ISBN: 9780195174885. Fiege, Mark. Irrigated Eden: The Making of an Agricultural Landscape in the American West. Seattle WA: University of Washington Press, 2000. ISBN: 9780295980133. Stoll, Steven. Larding the Lean Earth: Soil and Society in Nineteenth-Century America. New York, NY: Hill and Wang, 2002. ISBN: 9780809064311. Films: Lorentz, Pare. The Plow That Broke the Plains. Directed by Pare Lorentz. 25 min. Resettlement Administration (A U.S. Documentary Film), 1936. Videocassette. ———. The River. Directed by Pare Lorentz. 31 min. Farm Security Administration (A U.S. Documentary Film), 1938. Videocassette.
5	Colonial Concerns	Vickers, Daniel. Farmers and Fishermen: Two Centuries of Work in Essex County, Massachusetts, 1630-1850. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1994. ISBN: 9780807844588. Cronon, William. Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England. Revised ed. New York, NY: Hill and Wang, 2003. ISBN: 9780809016341. Kulikoff, Allan. From British Peasants to Colonial American Farmers. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2000. ISBN: 9780807848821.
6	Hunters and Prey	Warren, Louis. The Hunter’s Game: Poachers and Conservationists in 20th Century America. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999. ISBN: 9780300080865. Jacoby, Karl. Crimes Against Nature: Squatters, Poachers, Thieves, and the Hidden History of American Conservation. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2003. ISBN: 0520239091. McEvoy, Arthur. The Fisherman’s Problem: Ecology and Law in the California Fisheries, 1850-1980. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1986. ISBN: 0521385865.
7	The South and Slavery	Berlin, Ira. Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998. ISBN: 0674810929. Daniel, Pete. Breaking the Land: The Transformation of Cotton, Tobacco, and Rice Cultures Since 1880. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1985. ISBN: 0252011473. Foley, Neil. The White Scourge: Mexicans, Blacks, and Poor Whites in Texas Cotton Culture. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1997. ISBN: 0520207246. Wilkinson, Alec. Big Sugar: Seasons in the Cane Fields of Florida. New York, NY: Knopf, 1989. ISBN: 0679731873.
8	Production and Consumption	Neth, Mary. Preserving the Family Farm: Women, Community, and the Foundations of Agribusiness in the Midwest, 1900-1940. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998. ISBN: 9780801860614. Kline, Ron. Consumers in the Country: Technology and Social Change in Rural America. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002. ISBN: 9780801871153. Danbom, David. Born in the Country: A History of Rural America. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995. ISBN: 0801850401. Barron, Hal. Mixed Harvest: The Second Great Transformation in the Rural North, 1870-1930. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1997. ISBN: 9780807846599.
9	Labor and Management	Agee, James, and Walker Evans. Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 2001. ISBN: 9780618127498. McWilliams, Cary. Factories in the Field: The Story of Migratory Farm Labor in California . Waltham, MA: Peregrine Publishers, 1971. ISBN: 9780879050054. Goldschmidt, Walter. As You Sow. New York, NY: Harcourt Brace, 1978. ISBN: 9780916672119. Hahamovitch, Cindy. The Fruits of Their Labor: Atlantic Coast Farmworkers and the Making of Migrant Poverty, 1870-1945. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1997. ISBN: 9780807846391.
10	Modernity and Its Discontents	Fitzgerald, Deborah. Every Farm a Factory: The Industrial Ideal in American Agriculture. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003. ISBN: 9780300088137. Stoll, Steven. The Fruits of Natural Advantage: Making the Industrial Countryside in California. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1998. ISBN: 9780520211728. Vaught, David. Cultivating California: Growers, Specialty Crops, and Labor, 1875-1920. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002. ISBN: 9780801871122. Tobey, Ron, and Charles Weatherell. “The Citrus Industry and the Revolution of Corporate Capitalism in Southern California, 1887-1944.” California History 74 (1995): 6-21.
11	The Farm Crisis and Agricultural Policy	Dudley, Kathryn. Debt and Dispossession: Farm Loss in America’s Heartland. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2000. ISBN: 9780226169118. Barlett, Peggy. American Dreams, Rural Realities: Family Farms in Crisis. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1993. ISBN: 9780807843994. Cochrane, Willard. Development of American Agriculture: A Historical Analysis. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1979. ISBN: 9780816609260. Busch, Lawrence, William Lacy, Jeffrey Bukhardt, and Laura Lacy. Plants, Power and Profit: Social, Economic, and Ethical Consequences of the New Plant Biotechnology. Cambridge: Blackwell, 1991. ISBN: 9781557860880. Film: Ascher, Steven and Jeanne Jordan (dir.) Troublesome Creek: A Midwestern. Written by Steven Ascher and Jeanne Jordan.  Produced by Steven Ascher.  88 min., 1995.
12	Student Presentations