PHIL 5540 - Hydrotopia: Water Rights and the Environment

Meets with CVEEN 6480. Aridity is the defining physical feature of the American West, and the soci-political ecology of the West can only be understood in relationship to this feature. From the outset, inhabitants of the West was motivated by a utopian vision that focused on transforming the region into a new Eden: a hydraulic society made possible through engineering. Today, however, the inhabitants of the West are being forced to re-examine and re-consummate their relationship to both the water resources available to them and the technologies that can be used to manipulate those resources. By investigating the cultural context in which the West was originally settled and how that context changed to bring us where we are today, we will try to understand where this new relationship might be taking us.