2014 CER Lunchtime Lectures: Nature and the American Mind

!Free and Open to the Public – bring a lunch and learn

2014 is the eleventh year of CER Lunchtime Lectures, and this year’s lectures will focus on our myths of American Nature. Myths are foundational narratives used by humans to make sense of the world. We all know the traditional narrative of American Nature – that there once was wilderness in America, discovered and destroyed by European settlers, or, perhaps, not all destroyed, as we preserved bits and pieces of untouched Nature in “wilderness areas” and “parks”. Meanwhile, we try to conserve the rest of Nature outside of the boundaries of preservation, but conservationists divided between “sportsmen” who kill and eat nature and “nature-watchers” who look and take pictures of nature.  Looming over all is the shadow of the City, that sprawl of urbanism destroying American Nature. This caricature of a complicated story leaves out ecology, environmentalism, sustainability, agriculture, and more. 

In 1967, the historian Roderick Nash published a foundational book about the idea of wilderness entitled Wilderness and the American Mind. I have shamelessly modified his title for my broader effort to explore the many aspects of Nature and the American Mind, this complex story that threads through our history and shapes beliefs, policies, science, and management practices today. I will begin the year by exploring four main Myths of American Nature – wilderness, pastoral, urban, and the newly emerging narrative of resilient nature. Through the summer, I will look at Science and American Nature – the development of natural history, biology, ecology, and environmental science was shaped by the myths of American Nature. Then I will finish the year by examining how myths and science influence the Management of American Nature from the early battle between preservationists and conservationists to the relationship between farming and nature to urban planning and design meant to sustain American cities through using nature.

So join me in 2014 as I explore Nature and the American Mind!

Dr. Kevin M. Anderson is a geographer and philosopher who is the coordinator of the Austin Water Center for Environmental Research. He has studied at Allegheny College in Pennsylvania [BA], Durham University, England, Ohio University [MA] where he taught philosophy and symbolic logic for several years. He received his Ph.D. in Geography from the University of Texas at Austin with a dissertation entitled: Marginal Nature: Urban Wastelands and the Geography of Nature.  His research interests include soil ecology and sustainable agriculture, urban ecology and sustainability, riparian ecology, environmental history, philosophy, and literature.  He is a co-founder of the Texas Riparian Association and Research Fellow with the University of Texas – Texas Natural Science Center.

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