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<font face="Arial, Helvetica" color="#800000"><b><i>Modern Times, Rural
Places:<br>
Seminar Series at MIT<br>
<br>
</i></font><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=7 color="#800000">Conevery
Bolton Valencius<br>
</b></font><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=4 color="#800000">Assistant
Professor, Department of History, Program in American Culture Studies,
<br>
and Program in Environmental Studies, Washington University<br>
</font><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=6 color="#800000"><b>“Country”
Matters: Understanding the Early-Nineteenth-Century American
Environment<br>
<br>
</font><font face="Arial, Helvetica" color="#800000">Friday, October
10th, 2003<br>
2:30 to 4:30 pm<br>
MIT, Building E51 Room 095<br>
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<font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=3>In the early United States, people
who left their home regions wrote and spoke of the “country” they
encountered elsewhere. This notion of “country” had little to do
with national boundaries: people could travel from a “new country”
to their own, all the while remaining formally within American
territory. <br>
What does the frequent reference to new and different “country” tell us
about environments of the early nineteenth century? <br>
To early Americans, environments were localized, they were
differentiated, they were sometimes overlapping, and they were vitally
important for human health and well-being. Reports of the
earthquakes of 1811-12, however, challenged some of this sense of
“country”: earthquakes were not discretely localized, and they
connected vast regions, rather than differentiating them. Looking
at various descriptions of the “face of the country,” at rest and in
turmoil, thus gives some sense of the change in regional perception over
the early nineteenth century. <br>
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<font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=2 color="#800000">Sponsored by MIT’s
History Faculty and the Program in Science, Technology, and Society<br>
<br>
For more information or to be put on the mailing list, please contact
Margo Collett at <u>mcollett@mit.edu</u> or log onto our websites<br>
at
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