SEMINAR PROPOSAL: STUDENT DIRECTED SEMINARS

The Politics of Food: History and Theory of North American Cultivation

This course will focus on the history of gardening, landscape architecture, agriculture, forestry,
and sub/urban design in the colonization of the North American continent by European settlers.
It will use primary historical as well as secondary historical and theoretical texts to understand
how our immediate environment has been constructed by a series of aesthetic, political,
economic and scientific trends. Due to the broad and immediately significant subject matter,
and its consequence for many different fields, it will be of interest to Arts and Science students in
a broad range of backgrounds, including English, History, Philosophy, Forestry, Land & Food
Systems, and more.

The course will require research, analytical and compositional skills to achieve its goal of
students synthesizing the materials, developing a research topic, and completing an academic
term paper. While the particular approach (literary, scientific, historical, etc) will not be
dictated by the course, as it encourages interdisciplinary approaches to the subject matter, it will
be expected to meet a standard Arts rubric in terms of quality of rhetoric and composition. For
this reason, the course is not recommended for students who do not have experience writing
undergraduate papers in Arts courses. (I am unsure what department will be happy to have us,
though it would be worth asking LFS and Philosophy.)

The course will meet once a week, preferably in the afternoon, with readings scheduled for
completion the day of, so they can be discussed and criticized. The course will use its once-a-
week timeblock to allow for experiential learning, with trips to on-campus resources relevant to
the historical and theoretical materials of the week. These venues will include the UBC
Botanical Gardens, UBC Farm, and other campus areas highlighting particular cultivation
practices. I have yet to open up a dialogue with UBC Farm, but the possibility of a guest
lecturer via their invaluable network is a distinct possibility. I know there are many graduate
students doing directed studies with a passion for exactly this type of material.

The goal of the course is to engage students in the subject matter sufficiently to stimulate them to
conduct secondary research culminating in a term paper which provides unique insight and
additional material to the field of study. After a mid-term analytical paper is turned in, we will
complete research proposals which will be presented to the group (~5mins each) for
collaboration and feedback. This feedback will be used to develop the full term paper.
Assignments may also include reading responses via a UBC blog on a weekly or bi-weekly basis.
Attendance and participation will also factor into the final mark. Papers will be marked in a
peer-review manner with co-ordinator oversight if any complaints are made.

The following syllabus is for a Sept-Dec course, as it is structured somewhat around the weather.
If the seminar occurs in the January term, significant changes will be made in regards to trip
planning.
 Draft Syllabus

First Class: “A Green Velvety Carpet: The Front Lawn in America.” Jenkins, V. S. (1994).
Journal of American Culture, 17: 43-47.

19th Century.

BC:

Excerpts from: “Sunday walks and seed traps : the many natural histories of British Columbia
forest conservation, 1890-1925.” Brownstein, David. 2006.
• Part 1: Scientific Culture in British Columbia & Beyond.
• Part 3: The “Moses” of British Columbia Botany, or John Davidson and the
Vancouver Natural History Society.
[Visit to UBC Botanical Gardens.]

Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Wisdom of Aboriginal Peoples in British

Columbia. Nancy J. Turner; Marianne Boelscher Ignace; Ronald Ignace
[Visit to UBC Farm.]

NA:

Excerpts from: Landscape Archaeology: Reading and Interpreting the American Historical
Landscape. Methany, Karen Bescherer, & Yamin, Rebecca.
• “Close Attention to Place – Landscape Studies by Historical Archaeologists.” Yentsch,
Anne Elizabeth
• “Giant in the Earth: George Washington, Landscape Designer.” Pogue, Dennis J.
• “Farmers and Gentlemen Farmers: The Nineteenth-Century Suburban Landscape.”
Bridges, Sarah T. & Yamin, Rebecca.
• “Social Relations and the Cultural Landscape.” Hood, Edward J.

Letters from: Thomas Jefferson’s Garden Book. Jefferson, Thomas.

Excerpts from: A treatise on the theory and practice of landscape gardening, adapted to North
America. Downing, Andrew Jackson.
• Section 1
• Section 2
20th Century

Excerpts from: Ensuring Inequality: The Structural Transformation of the African-American

Family. Franklin, Donna L.
• Chapter 2: Sharecropping and the Rural Proletariat.

Excerpts from: The lawn: a history of an American obsession. Jenkins, V. S. 1994.

Excerpts from: Energy & Society. Cottrell, Fred.

• Chapter 7: The Industrialization of Agriculture. 169-204.

Toward a Psychosociology of Contemporary Food Consumption. Barthes, Roland.

In Defense of Food. Pollan, Michael.

Commentary on Teaching Food: Why I Am Fed Up with Michael Pollan et al. Guthman, Julie.

Fatal Harvest: Old and New Dimensions of the Ecological Tragedy of Modern Agriculture.
Altieri, Miguel A.

Indigenous Nutrition: Using Traditional Food Knowledge to Solve Contemporary Health

Problems. Milburn, Michael P.