Remaking the Prairie: The Cultural Politics of Ecological Restoration

This course uses the Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie as a case study to understand the environmental and cultural challenges of ecological restoration. In essence, we will look at the Midewin as an environmental humanities problem, asking the questions: What does it mean to restore a landscape or an ecosystem? What values or biases are in place in ecological restoration and how do we overcome them? The Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie, managed by the US Forest Service, is a restored prairie on the former site of the WII era Joliet Army Ammunition Plant. Throughout the September Term, we will visit the site several times to meet with Forest Service employees, participate in environmental restoration work, collect data for ecological studies, and learn more about the complicated history of the prairie and efforts to restore it. Analysis of the Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie and ecological restoration more broadly will be done from an interdisciplinary lens that takes seriously the sometimes-competing stakes of indigeneity, agriculture, settler colonialism, ecology, history, militarism, and recreation, among others.