[Sci-tech-public] MIT Seminar on Environmental and Agricultural History, September 26, 2008

[Margo Collett]

MIT Seminar on Environmental and

Agricultural History



“Let Us Now Praise Famous Gullies:  Georgia's 'Little Grand Canyon'  
and Conservation in the South”



Paul Sutter

Associate Professor of History, University of Georgia

Known as Georgia's "Little Grand Canyon," Providence Canyon State Park  
protects some striking canyon and badland formations in west central  
Georgia.  But this spectacular spot resulted from massive erosion  
allegedly produced by negligent cotton farming during the 19th  
century. Providence Canyon is the biggest erosion gully the South has  
produced and was famous back in the 1930s.  During that decade, the  
locals tried to make it into a national park, insisting that it was a  
natural formation of unparalleled scenic beauty. Meanwhile, national  
soil conservationists and environmental reformers consistently invoked  
it as the poster-child of southern soil abuse, a potent visual symbol  
of human-induced environmental degradation.  I will examine what it  
means to preserve as a park the results of an environmental disaster,  
how two groups could interpret the place in such diametrically opposed  
ways, and how we might interpret the place today in ways that would  
help us to rethink the relationship between southerners, their soils,  
and the politics of environmental representation.


Friday, September 26, 2008

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 mcollett at mit.edu. 
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