[Sci-tech-public] MIT Seminar on Environmental and Agricultural History, FRIDAY 11-16-07

[Margo Collett]

MIT Seminar on Environmental and Agricultural History

“How Sick Was My Valley:  A History of Bodies, 
Ecologies, and Knowledge in California’s Rural Landscape”

Linda Nash
Associate Professor of History, University of Washington

Medicine­the practices of understanding, curing, 
and preventing disease­has been central to our 
relationship with rural spaces.  In the 
nineteenth century, it was assumed that sickness 
sprang from place, yet in the twentieth it would 
become almost impossible to connect the 
two.  Nineteenth-century settlers debated the 
health costs of irrigation and tree cutting, 
while in the twentieth century organic pesticides 
were introduced on a massive scale with little 
discussion of their potential health 
effects.  How did it become possible to 
understand disease and health as states that are 
fully independent of the landscape?  What are the 
history and the social implications of any particular view of disease?

Friday, November 16, 2007
2:30 to 4:30 pm
Building E51 Room 095
Corner of Wadsworth and Amherst Streets, Cambridge


Sponsored by MIT’s History Faculty and the 
Program in Science, Technology, and Society. For 
more information or to be put on the mailing 
list, please contact Margo Collett at 
<mailto:mcollet at mit.edu>mcollett at mit.edu.
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