RHN 151/2013 | Call
28-29 March 2014, Rollins College in Winter Park, FL
Deadline: 1 December 2013
Southern Forum on Agricultural, Rural, and Environmental History
The seventh annual Southern Forum on Agricultural, Rural, and Environmental History (SFARE) will be held at Rollins College in Winter Park, FL on March 28-29, 2014. Sponsored by the Department of History and Political Science at Rollins, with support from the Center for the History of Agriculture, Science, and the Environment of the South (CHASES) at Mississippi State University and Agricultural History, the forum’s goal is to provide a welcoming and collegial environment for students and established scholars to present new material that pushes the boundaries of agricultural, rural, and environmental history.
Dr. James C. Giesen will give the keynote address. Giesen is an associate professor of history at Mississippi State University, where he directs the graduate program in Agricultural, Rural, and Environmental History. He is the director of CHASES and executive secretary of the Agricultural History Society. His 2011 book, Boll Weevil Blues: Cotton, Myth, and Power in the American South, won the 2012 Deep South Book Prize. His keynote address will come from his new project, a study of the cultural economy of cotton in the South.
Conference organizers have scheduled a field trip to Lake Apopka for the “Toxic Tour.” Lake Apopka, less than thirty minutes from Rollins, was once the site of some of the richest farmland and best fishing in Florida. However, in order to control agricultural pests and diseases, area farmers heavily treated the land with pesticides and toxins (including DDT). Fertilizer and pesticide runoff eventually overwhelmed Lake Apopka, making it a dead zone. The federal government bought the farmland in the late 1990s; cleanup and restoration efforts continue.
The organizers intend this event to be a place for scholars of all ranks to try out innovative ideas in an informal, supportive, and constructive setting. Toward that end, we ask that participants plan on attending all sessions to generate quality discussion for all presenters (the sessions will be non-concurrent). Work on all geographic locations and time periods is welcome. Faculty and students are invited to submit session, roundtable, or single-paper proposals on any topic dealing with rural, agricultural, or environmental history. Please submit a one-hundred-word paper proposal or a two-hundred-fifty-word session proposal, and brief biographical sketch or CV electronically to Annabel Tudor, Managing Editor, Agricultural History, atudor@rollins.edu. The deadline for submissions is December 1, 2013. Presenters will be notified by January 1, 2014.
Source: aghistorysociety.org