Please save the date for the Department of Geography, Environment and Society's annual Brown Day Lecture on Friday, Mar 3rd from 3:30-5:30pm, in Honeywell Auditorium. Prof. William J. Cronon will be presenting his talk titled "The Portage: Reflections on Nature, History, and Storytelling in the Making of an American Place."
This year they are honored to have William J. Cronon, Frederick Jackson Turner and Vilas Research Professor of History, Geography and Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His talk is titled, "The Portage: Reflections on Nature, History and Storytelling in the Making of an American Place."
More information:
In a lecture based on the opening chapter of the book he is writing on the history of Portage, Wisconsin, environmental historian William Cronon meditates on the role of memory and storytelling in the complicated ways human beings construct their individual and collective sense of place. A natural ecosystem or an abstract geographical space becomes a human place, he argues, through the endless accretion of narratives that render that place meaningful for those who visit or live in it. Portage is an especially interesting community in which to explore this idea, since it was the home town of Frederick Jackson Turner, the American historian who authored the famous "frontier thesis." It was also the town into whose hinterland John Muir migrated as an eleven-year-old boy from Scotland, and the town where Aldo Leopold's "Shack," famed subject of the book A Sand County Almanac, is located. Although virtually unknown to most Americans, few places have played so central a role in shaping our national ideas of nature.
The talk will be held on May 3, 2013 from 3:30-5:30pm in the Honeywell Auditorium (L-110), Carlson Building, University of Minnesota.
The Department of Geography, Environment, and Society hope to see you there!
