Plymouth State Early American History Professor Abby Goode
January 23rd, 2020
6pm
Hanover Friends Meeting House
43 Lebanon St, Hanover, NH 03755
What is sustainability? And how has American literature shaped our understanding of this concept, in ways both surprising and disturbing? This interactive program begins with a discussion of current ideas about sustainability. Then, we will go back in time to examine Thomas Jefferson’s vision of American agricultural abundance, which he contrasted with an overpopulated and under-resourced Europe. Throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, writers such as Walt Whitman and Charlotte Perkins Gilman drew on Jefferson’s agrarian vision to respond to sustainability crises of their time. But in so doing, they depicted selective breeding and racial “improvement” as the solution to population crises and the path to agricultural plenty. We will explore this particularly eugenic conception of sustainability and discuss what new or different versions of sustainability might prove more useful in our current moment.
Abby L. Goode is Assistant Professor of English at Plymouth State University. Currently, she is writing a book about the history of sustainability, agriculture, and population control in American literature. Her research appears or is forthcoming in venues such as Early American Literature, Studies in American Fiction, ESQ: A Journal of Nineteenth-Century American Literature and Culture, and American Studies in Scandinavia. She teaches courses in American literature, critical theory, wilderness literature, writing and sustainability, and American food issues.
There is limited parking at the Quaker Meeting House, please plan on parking in Hanover and walking to this location.
Alison Marchione
Programs Director
Upper Valley Land Trust
603-643-6626 x 109
19 Buck Road, Hanover NH 03755
Learn more about UVLT and our programs at www.uvlt.org
