"Grassroots Modernities: Nature, Agriculture and Improvement in the Atlantic World" on June 9th, 2015

The Yale Center for the Study of Representative Institutions would like to announce its upcoming conference:

Grassroots Modernities: Nature, Agriculture, and Improvement in the Atlantic World

Tuesday, June 9th, 2015
8:30 AM - 5:30 PM
Luce Hall, Room 202
34 Hillhouse Avenue

Schedule

8:30-9:00 Welcome 

9:10-10:50 Agriculture, Knowledge and the State

A ‘Country richly calculated’: How Britain Mapped the Agricultural Potential of American Land, ca. 1754-1791, S. Max Edelson, University of Virginia

Seed Sharing in the US Patent Office, 1836-1861, Courtney Fullilove, Wesleyan University

How and Why to Call on the State in an Agrarian Republic, Ariel Ron, Yale University

Matthew Lockwood, Yale University, Chair

James Scott, Yale University, Discussant

11:00-12:40 Conceiving Time and Space in Agricultural Improvement

’Subverting the Stationary Precision of the Calendar’: Representations of Space and Time in Eighteenth-Century Horticultural Guides, Kate Wersan, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Forwarding the Season: Time, Diaries, and Territory in Antebellum Agricultural Improvement, Emily Pawley, Dickinson College

Building on the Biological Enlightenment: The Revolutionary Generation and the Improvement of American Agriculture, Dan Kevles, Yale University

Keith Wrightson, Yale University, Chair

Joyce Chaplin, Harvard University, Discussant

12:40-2:00 Lunch

2:00-3:40 Workers and Bodies in Agricultural Improvement

Feeding People and other Animals in the Eighteenth Century, Anya Zilberstein, Concordia University

Improvement in Service of Slavery: Cotton Capitalism and Atlantic Agricultural Reform in the U.S. South, Ian Beamish, Dalhousie University

Improving Livestock and Slaves in Eighteenth-Century Virginia and Jamaica, Joshua Kercsmar, Valparaiso University

Edward Rugemer, Yale University, Chair

Tamara Plakins Thornton, SUNY Buffalo, Discussant

4:00-5:30 Roundtable: New Directions in the Study of Agricultural Improvement

Joyce Chaplin, Harvard University

Richard Drayton, King’s College London

Fredrik A. Jonsson, University of Chicago

Christopher Clark, University of Connecticut

 Naomi Lamoreaux, Yale University, Chair

For inquiries related to the conference, please contact the co-organizers, Ariel Ron (ariel.ron@yale.edu) or Emily Pawley (payleye@dickinson.edu).