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<b><font class="Apple-style-span" size="4">MIT Seminar on Environmental and Agricultural History</font></b></div>
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<b><font class="Apple-style-span" size="4">Jared Farmer</font></b></div>
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<b><font class="Apple-style-span" size="4">Associate Professor of History, Stony Brook University</font></b></div>
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<b><font class="Apple-style-span" size="4">HistoricTrees and Historicized Tree-rings</font></b></div>
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<font class="Apple-style-span" size="4">Around 1900, curators at the American Museum of Natural History mounted a historical chronology onto the</font></div>
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<font class="Apple-style-span" size="4">cross-section of a multi-millennial giant sequoia. Over the next few decades, this curatorial convention—treerings</font></div>
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<font class="Apple-style-span" size="4">bisected by a timeline—spread to many science museums and nature parks. The majority have since been</font></div>
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<font class="Apple-style-span" size="4">deaccessioned, but in Paris, London, Boston, and New York, museumgoers today can still see representations</font></div>
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<font class="Apple-style-span" size="4">of linear time across circular rings. Although the cross-sections themselves retain the power to impress, these</font></div>
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<font class="Apple-style-span" size="4">megaoral installations, much like megafaunal dioramas, are decidedly old-fashioned in today’s museum world.</font></div>
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<font class="Apple-style-span" size="4">They’re so old-fashioned it’s hard to appreciate how novel they were in the early twentieth century. Giving</font></div>
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<font class="Apple-style-span" size="4">speech to historic trees was an established tradition, but speaking historically with tree-rings was not.</font></div>
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<font class="Apple-style-span" size="4">A historicized cross-section installed in a science museum represented a signicant departure from the</font></div>
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<font class="Apple-style-span" size="4">previous century’s analogues: historic trees in situ and arboreal relics in history halls. By investigating what</font></div>
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<font class="Apple-style-span" size="4">came before and after, we can better understand the changing relationship between Americans and memory</font></div>
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<font class="Apple-style-span" size="4">objects, and Americans and their trees.</font></div>
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<b><font class="Apple-style-span" size="4">Friday, September 18, 2015</font></b></div>
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<b><font class="Apple-style-span" size="4">2:30 - 4:30 PM</font></b></div>
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<b><font class="Apple-style-span" size="4">E51-095, cnr of Amherst and Wadsworth Sts.</font></b></div>
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<font class="Apple-style-span" size="4">This talk is sponsored by the MIT History Faculty and the Program in Science, Technology and Society. For more information</font></div>
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<font class="Apple-style-span" size="4">contact <a href="mailto:mcollett@mit.edu">mcollett@mit.edu</a>.</font></div>
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