| Response sheet 18, for lecture class, Thursday | |
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1. What did Brian Black mean by “sacrificial landscape”? 2. To what degree did Black substantiate his argument that Mather’s photographs contributed to cultural acceptance of transformative change focused on the economic while ignoring the ecological? What other evidence might Black have used to substantiate this argument, one rather important to his essay? 3. Fritz Haber, a chemist, won a Nobel Prize in 1918 for his research on the synthesis of ammonia, which enabled the industrial development of artificial fertilizers — and also of poison gas (deployed with awful consequences in World War I). Before 1918 people were reliant on organic fertilizers. What kinds of organic fertilizers do you imagine American farming families used in the 19th century? How could they, individually and collectively, secure sufficient amounts for the size of their fields? |