Wilderness and the American Mind

“A wilderness,” states the Wilderness Act of 1964, is “an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.” Even though this definition of wilderness focuses on the removal of human traces from the natural world, wilderness is a concept that has been historically shaped by human values and culture. In this course, we will explore how the idea of wilderness has shifted and evolved over time. While wilderness certainly has global importance, we will primarily focus on the role of wilderness in the United States, tracking the development of this term from the early years of European settlement to the present day. We will read a variety of nonfiction texts that seek to define wilderness and articulate its importance, and we will also explore how the idea of wilderness has impacted the American imagination through poems and stories.

Here are a few questions that will be central to the course: What did the early American colonizers make of the “wilderness condition” they found in the “New World”? How do indigenous conceptions of the wild differ from those of the colonizers? How were American ideas about nature shaped by romanticism? What are the origins and goals of the conservation movement? How did radical environmentalists change the discourse around wilderness in the twentieth century? What role should wilderness play in the age of climate change and the Anthropocene?

Samuel Walker is a visiting instructor from the University of Virginia.