From weed control and horse ecology to wetlands and recreational landscapes, Draining the Great Oasis: An Environmental History of Murray County, Minnesota demonstrates how science, history, literature, and philosophy can interact to interpret the history of a southwestern Minnesota county. This book captures the detail of a specific place while addressing the broader experiences of life on the prairie, where major ecological changes accompanied large-scale agriculture.

Thursday, October 25, 2001
Southwest Minnesota State University (SMSU)
Student Center West (SCW)

Conference Agenda

9:00 a.m.	Welcome
9:15	Introduction of the Book, Draining the Great Oasis: An Environmental History of Murray County, Minnesota Anthony Amato and Janet Timmerman, Editors
9:45	"The Terrain of Murray County from Till to Tile" Thomas Dilley and Douglas Spieles, Assistant Professors of Environmental Science
10:30	Keynote Address: "Cosmos in the Local" Laura Dassow Walls, Associate Professor of English at Lafayette College, Easton, Pennsylvania
11:45	Lunch ($6.00, reservations required, 507-537-6288)
12:30 p.m.	"Murray County as our Microcosmos" Joseph Amato, Professor of Rural and Regional Studies and History
1:00	SSU Student Perspective
1:30	"Photographic Essay of Thoreau's Local Landscape, Walden Pond and Concord" Bradley Dean, Media Center Director at the Thoreau Institute, Lincoln, Massachusetts
2:30	Concurrent Panel Sessions Dialogue will center on the direction of local environmental history and what future studies are needed for southwestern Minnesota
3:30	Closing Reception and Authors' Celebration

Laura Dassow Walls teaches American literature at Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania, where she also teaches Literature and Science and coordinates the Values and Science / Technology Program. She has published a number of articles on Thoreau, Emerson, Humboldt, and others, as well as a book, See New Worlds: Henry David Thoreau and Nineteenth-Century Natural Science (Wisconsin 1995). Currently she is finishing a book on Emerson and science, and starting a new project on the concept of cosmos in nineteenth-century America.

Bradley Dean lives and works at the Thoreau Institute in Lincoln, Massachusetts (less than half a mile from Walden Pond), where he is director of the Media Center. He has published widely on Thoreau and has taught at several major universities. He is presently at work on Thoreau multi-volume North American Indian Journals.

The conference is hosted by the Center for Rural and Regional Studies. It is free of charge and open to the public. Pre-registration is not required. If you desire to reserve a lunch, the cost is $6.00. Lunch reservations are required by Monday, October 22nd.

Get a printable version of the agenda

Funding provided by the Center for Rural and Regional Studies, the Minnesota Humanities Commission, the Society for the Study of Local and Regional History, the Minnesota Environment and Natural Resources Trust Fund, and the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (Region 4)