As we delve into the second half of our text and begin to think about how deceivingly simple objects are connected to much of the theory that we learned about in previous weeks, I find myself uncontrollably excited about our individual situated projects. I am researching Grand Coulee Dam and situating it in a historical context. The Grand Coulee Dam was product of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal and the excitement about electricity that infected the nation. Some of the most interested aspects of Grand Coulee I have found are the rhetorical strategies and superlatives used to sell the Grand Coulee Dam to the American people.
I think that looking at objects in this situated, interconnected way is a fantastic way to introduce the interdisciplinary approach to our Environmental Studies curriculum. Its true- politics, economics, biology, rhetoric and engineering are all at play within the complex and important story of the Grand Coulee Dam. Likewise, wolves in Yellowstone enjoy a similar pervasiveness. Trees in many places and cultures also pop up in many different fields, and Carbon Dioxide pops up everywhere.
In relation to the theoretical approaches we have pursued in the previous weeks of this class, many of the hybrid aspects of each object are socially constructed. For instance, in my project about Grand Coulee Dam, I discuss both the Great Depression and the Second World War. Both of these events exist in history, but how we understand them and the feelings they invoke in relation to Grand Coulee very much complicate the conclusions we can draw from the story of the dam. Historical circumstances and literature of the day created a powerful myth around the dam, and when we look at it today we cannot separate the dam which was once declared like a Great Pyramid but only much more useful from the dam which contributed to the endangerment of the salmon and the destruction of Native American culture. Both the history of an object and the contemporary bias surrounding it create its complex story.