Spring Semester 2009 Events

River and Post-Industrial Place: Susquehanna Valley Riverand Coal Towns Today

Tues., Jan. 22

Ben Marsh (Geography) and Carl Milofsky (Sociology) with regional partners

Social scientists from Bucknell and the region discuss from a humanistic perspective their work in studying and helping to support renewal of the region’s communities as they face new crises and opportunities in the wake of deindustrialization.

Europeans and Native Americans: Communication, Community, and the Confluence

Katherine Faull (Comparative Humanities/Foreign Languages), Bucknell University, Thursday, February 5th

James Merrell (History), Vassar College, Thursday, February 19

Amy Schutt (History), SUNY Cortland, Thursday, March 19

Katherine Faull (Comparative Humanities) presents important new work of national significance on the Shamokin Diaries, early Moravian journals that are revealing forgotten details of life at the Susquehanna confluence in the mid-eighteenth century as Native Americans and Euro-Americans mingled relatively peacefully before native societies were driven away. Two prominent historians then help to put those events and cultural encounters at the confluence in a national perspective, discussing the significance to American history of often ignored events and encounters at the confluence
of the Susquehanna in the eighteenth century.

Pantisocracy and Place: American Utopia and the Susquehanna

Tues., April 9

Ghislaine McDayter (English), Roger Rothman (Art/Art History), Diana Di Stefano (History), and guests

A Romanticist, a scholar of visual culture, an environmental historian from Bucknell, discuss with visiting experts the visions of Joseph Priestley, Ole Bull, Joseph Smith and others for utopia on the Susquehanna during its time under U.S. rule—and the relation between “sense of place” and the environment in relation to imagination, desire, and ideology from then until now in American culture.