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<div align="center"><b><i>MIT Seminar on Environmental <br>
and Agricultural History<br>
</i> <br>
Patricia Limerick<br>
</b>Professor of History, University of Colorado<br>
<b><i>“How the “Real West” Became – and <u>Stayed</u> – the Rural West:
Literature, Open Spaces, and the Eclipse of the City”<br>
</i> <br>
</b></div>
The Jeffersonian Agrarian Dream lives in multiple regions, yet the
American West seems to live with the most culturally reinforced,
cemented, and glued idea that the "Real West" is rural, and the
true Westerner is a cowboy or (less likely) a plucky Plains farmer.
Even as the region has led the nation in measures of urbanization and
suburbanization, and even as many rural Western economic enterprises have
declined or become very closely tied to the recreational enthusiasms of
city-and-suburb-dwellers, the rural image of the "Real West"
holds its ground. In much of our work in "applied history" at
the University of Colorado's Center of the American West, we are in
constant contact with this habit of mind, watching while a romanticized
and over-generalized idea of Western rurality blocks the road to a
realistic reckoning with both urban and rural dilemmas (not to mention
suburban and exurban challenges). Patricia Nelson Limerick will
appraise and analyze the origins of and the powers of persistence of this
long-lasting association of the West with the rural.<br>
<div align="center"><b> <br>
Friday, April 6, 2007<br>
2:30 to 4:30 pm<br>
Building E51 Room 095<br>
</b> <br>
Sponsored by MIT’s History Faculty and the Program in Science,
Technology, and Society<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>
Free and open to the public. For location visit
<a href="http://whereis.mit.edu/map-jpg" eudora="autourl"><u>
http://whereis.mit.edu/map-jpg<br>
</a></u></div>
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