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<b><i> <br><br>
<div align="center">Modern Times, Rural Places:<br><br>
Seminar Series at MIT<br><br>
</i></b></div>
<br><br>
<div align="center"><b>Gregg Mitman<br><br>
</b>Professor of History of Science, Medical History, and Science &
Technology Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison<br><br>
<br><br>
<br><br>
<b>In Search of Health: Landscape and Disease in American
Environmental History<br><br>
</b></div>
<br><br>
Health. To Aldo Leopold it was the most vital function of living
organisms. Land, like the human body, Leopold argued, was subject to
disturbances that resulted in sickness and possessed a physiological
capacity for self-renewal once disturbed. The allusions to land
health in <i>A Sand County Almanac, </i>a text heralded for laying the
foundations of biocentrism, are striking. But how are we to make
sense of Leopold's seemingly incongruous mixture of medicine--the most
anthropocentric of scientific arts--with that of conservation--the
province and values of which Leopold hoped to ground largely in nonhuman
nature? Why, if health was so central to Leopold's conservation
thought and practice, has it not been a subject more central to American
environmental history? Leopold's notion of land health takes us on
an expansive voyage, from wildlife management in Wisconsin to colonial
administration in the British empire, from the ecology of disease to the
ecology of knowledge, from the Western frontier to landscapes of
regeneration in city parks and wilderness retreats. In this talk, I
aim to show that health as an analytic category, embedded in the
historical, material, and social relations of knowledge and place,
reveals new patterns in the historical landscape of American
environmentalism, whereby the spaces between health and conservation,
humans and nature, city and country, and American and European
environmental history appear not so wide. Air and water, microbes and
pollen, toxic chemicals and radiation move in and out of urban and rural
landscapes, through bodies, both human and nonhuman. How such
matter takes on form, acquires agency in bodies and landscapes, becomes a
commodity in the consumption of health, or is turned into danger and
risk, are themes that this lecture will explore. <br><br>
<br><br>
<div align="center"><b>Friday, December 10, 2004<br><br>
2:30 to 4:30 pm<br><br>
MIT, Building E51 Room 095<br><br>
</b></div>
<br><br>
<div align="center">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
<a href="mailto:mcollet@mit.edu">mcollett@mit.edu</a><br><br>
or log onto our websites at
<a href="http://web.mit.edu/history/www/index.html">http://web.mit.edu/history/www/index.html</a>
and <a href="http://web.mit.edu/sts/">http://web.mit.edu/sts/</a><br><br>
For location visit <a href="http://whereis.mit.edu/map-jpg" eudora="autourl"><u>http://whereis.mit.edu/map-jpg</a><br><br>
</u></div>
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