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<font color="#800000"><b><i>Modern Times, Rural Places:<br>
Seminar Series at MIT<br>
<br>
</i></font><font size=7 color="#800000">Conevery Bolton Valencius<br>
</b></font><font size=4 color="#800000">Assistant Professor, Department
of History, Program in American Culture Studies, <br>
and Program in Environmental Studies, Washington University<br>
<br>
</font>Boy collecting water from Spring Creek, Arkansas, 1930s<br>
Courtesy of the Arkansas History Commission<br>
<br>
<font size=6 color="#800000"><b>“Country” Matters: Understanding
the Early-Nineteenth-Century American Environment<br>
<br>
</font><font color="#800000">Friday, October 10th, 2003<br>
2:30 to 4:30 pm<br>
MIT, Building E51 Room 095<br>
<br>
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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>
<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>
<br>
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<font size=2 color="#800000">Sponsored by MIT’s History Faculty and the
Program in Science, Technology, and Society<br>
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