Podcasts about valencius

“Torn to pieces.” That's how the American frontiersman Davy Crockett, described the West Tennessee landscape. Nearly 15 years after it was rent asunder by the New Madrid earthquakes from December 1811 to February 1812. The tremors rocked an area that also included the present-day states of Missouri, Arkansas, Kentucky and Illinois, reshaping not only the landscape but also the lives of the people who settled there.So why were the quakes all but forgotten by the time of the Civil War? What caused them and could they happen again? Joining us to discuss this long-overlooked disaster in this Earth Month episode of Colloquy is Dr. Conevery Valencius, author of the recent book The Lost History of the New Madrid Earthquakes. Dr. Valencius is a professor of history at Boston College and has taught at Washington University, Saint Louis, Harvard, and the University of Massachusetts, Boston. She's been a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Debonair Institute for the History of Science and Technology. Dr. Valencius is currently working on a book about earthquakes and the modern energy sector. She received a Ph.D. in the History of Science from GCIS in 1998. 

The story begins with Davy Crockett and his hunting dogs chasing a bear in 1826. The bear gets caught in an earthquake crack, an effect of the great Mississippi Valley earthquakes of 1811-1812 that are now collectively known as the New Madrid earthquakes. In The Lost History of the New Madrid Earthquakes (University of Chicago Press, 2013), Conevery Bolton Valencius beautifully narrates a riveting tale of the production and forgetting of knowledge surrounding these earthquakes, massively disruptive events that liquefied the soil in much of the Mississippi floodplain and briefly made the Mississippi River flow backward. Valencius situates these events in the New Madrid seismic zone within their past, present, and possible futures. We are treated to the perspectives of those who experienced the quakes and their transformation of New Madrid into a hinterland, from river travelers and writers to the “Shawnee Prophets” Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa. Because of the wide range of historical actors treated in the book, the account is of relevance not only to the histories of early American science and environmental studies, but also to the histories of religious practice and native American politics and culture. Undoubtedly a rich and fascinating story, The Lost History of the New Madrid Earthquakes is also a special pleasure to read, thanks to the warm (and often very funny) asides and anecdotes with which Valencius peppers the book. Enjoy! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The story begins with Davy Crockett and his hunting dogs chasing a bear in 1826. The bear gets caught in an earthquake crack, an effect of the great Mississippi Valley earthquakes of 1811-1812 that are now collectively known as the New Madrid earthquakes. In The Lost History of the New Madrid Earthquakes (University of Chicago Press, 2013), Conevery Bolton Valencius beautifully narrates a riveting tale of the production and forgetting of knowledge surrounding these earthquakes, massively disruptive events that liquefied the soil in much of the Mississippi floodplain and briefly made the Mississippi River flow backward. Valencius situates these events in the New Madrid seismic zone within their past, present, and possible futures. We are treated to the perspectives of those who experienced the quakes and their transformation of New Madrid into a hinterland, from river travelers and writers to the “Shawnee Prophets” Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa. Because of the wide range of historical actors treated in the book, the account is of relevance not only to the histories of early American science and environmental studies, but also to the histories of religious practice and native American politics and culture. Undoubtedly a rich and fascinating story, The Lost History of the New Madrid Earthquakes is also a special pleasure to read, thanks to the warm (and often very funny) asides and anecdotes with which Valencius peppers the book. Enjoy! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The story begins with Davy Crockett and his hunting dogs chasing a bear in 1826. The bear gets caught in an earthquake crack, an effect of the great Mississippi Valley earthquakes of 1811-1812 that are now collectively known as the New Madrid earthquakes. In The Lost History of the New Madrid Earthquakes (University of Chicago Press, 2013), Conevery Bolton Valencius beautifully narrates a riveting tale of the production and forgetting of knowledge surrounding these earthquakes, massively disruptive events that liquefied the soil in much of the Mississippi floodplain and briefly made the Mississippi River flow backward. Valencius situates these events in the New Madrid seismic zone within their past, present, and possible futures. We are treated to the perspectives of those who experienced the quakes and their transformation of New Madrid into a hinterland, from river travelers and writers to the “Shawnee Prophets” Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa. Because of the wide range of historical actors treated in the book, the account is of relevance not only to the histories of early American science and environmental studies, but also to the histories of religious practice and native American politics and culture. Undoubtedly a rich and fascinating story, The Lost History of the New Madrid Earthquakes is also a special pleasure to read, thanks to the warm (and often very funny) asides and anecdotes with which Valencius peppers the book. Enjoy! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The story begins with Davy Crockett and his hunting dogs chasing a bear in 1826. The bear gets caught in an earthquake crack, an effect of the great Mississippi Valley earthquakes of 1811-1812 that are now collectively known as the New Madrid earthquakes. In The Lost History of the New Madrid Earthquakes (University of Chicago Press, 2013), Conevery Bolton Valencius beautifully narrates a riveting tale of the production and forgetting of knowledge surrounding these earthquakes, massively disruptive events that liquefied the soil in much of the Mississippi floodplain and briefly made the Mississippi River flow backward. Valencius situates these events in the New Madrid seismic zone within their past, present, and possible futures. We are treated to the perspectives of those who experienced the quakes and their transformation of New Madrid into a hinterland, from river travelers and writers to the “Shawnee Prophets” Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa. Because of the wide range of historical actors treated in the book, the account is of relevance not only to the histories of early American science and environmental studies, but also to the histories of religious practice and native American politics and culture. Undoubtedly a rich and fascinating story, The Lost History of the New Madrid Earthquakes is also a special pleasure to read, thanks to the warm (and often very funny) asides and anecdotes with which Valencius peppers the book. Enjoy! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In 2020, only a pathologically cheerful individual could say that the United States is a nation in a state of health. Between the malady of the coronavirus and the affliction of divisive polarization, the current state of affairs puts a premium on the chance to talk with an accomplished historian of American attitudes toward health and disease. A professor at Boston College, Conevery Valencius teaches courses on environmental history and the history of science and medicine. In her book, The Health of the Country: How American Settlers Understood Themselves and Their Land, Professor Valencius uncovers a close tie between the ways that mid-nineteenth-century Americans understood the landscapes and communities where they settled, and the ways they thought about their own bodies. Her conversation with Patty Limerick did not deliver a comprehensive diagnosis of the nation's condition, but proposed new interpretations and raised insightful questions addressing ideas about health and disease that many Americans now take for granted. And matching up to local issues, Professor Valencius is currently working on a book about the science of induced seismology (a.k.a. earthquakes!) and hydraulic fracturing.