University of Connecticut |PHOTO BANNER: Architectural detail of oak leaves and acorns, the logo for UConn. Itasca Lake by Seth Eastman, illustrating the "discovery" of the headwaters of the Mississippi River by Henry Rowe Schoolcraft in 1832 (credit to Minnesota Historical Society). Daguerreotype of Henry David Thoreau (credit to The Walden Woods Project). Unstaged pile of books on my desk during compilation of the bibliography for Beyond Walden, with science, history, literature, and a three-ring binder of my notes interstratified. In the background is a chart portraying vegetation history of the eastern U.S. Cultural GeologyI first heard this phrase from Harry Foster, my former editor at Houghton & Mifflin. At that time, he was trying to describe my interest in how geology influenced the rise of American culture during the early and mid 19th century, and how the historic landscape of that era can be seen as one big archaeological artifact. Basically: "Geology, the meat and bones of science, gave natural history the depth of time and the universality of process that would help transition European Calvinism into American Transcendentalism" [from the The Encyclopedia of New England, Yale University Press, 2003]. For an expansion of that statement, link to Thesis Statement. For a few of my specific contributions to this "emerging" discipline, link to:
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