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The nation's first and only "national reserve," the Pinelands of New Jersey is located in the middle of the densely populated urban corridor between New York City and Philadelphia. Possessing vast quantities of pure groundwater, distinct flora and fauna, and a fascinating history of human occupancy and resource exploitation, the Pine Barrens is managed by a 15-member commission appointed at the federal, state, and local level. In his discussion of the implementation of the Pinelands Commission's regional plan, Robert Mason explores the changing politics of place and the associated conflicts of interest that have emerged. The Pinelands program is widely viewed as a land-use and regional plann...
Any landscape has an unseen component: a subjective component of experience, memory, and narrative which people familiar with the place understand to be an integral part of its geography but which outsiders may not suspect the existence ofOCounless they listen and read carefully. This invisible landscape is make visible though stories, and these stories are the focus of this engrossing book. Traveling across the invisible landscape in which we imaginatively dwell, Kent RydenOCohimself a most careful listener and readerOCoasks the following questions. What categories of meaning do we read into our surroundings? What forms of expression serve as the most reliable maps to understanding those me...
What significance does the physical, material body still have in a world of virtual reality and genetic cloning? How do technology and postmodern rhetoric influence our understanding of the body? And how can our discussion of the body affect the way we handle crises in public policy--the politics of race and ethnicity; issues of "family values" that revolve around sexual and gender identities; the choices revolving around reproduction and genome projects, and the spread of disease? Leading scholars in rhetoric and communication, as well as literary and cultural studies, address some of the most important topics currently being discussed in the human sciences. The essays collected here suggest the wide range of public arenas in which rhetoric is operative--from abortion clinics and the World Wide Web to the media's depiction of illiteracy and the Donner Party. These studies demonstrate how the discourse of AIDS prevention or Demi Moore's "beautiful pregnancy" call to mind the physical nature of being human and the ways in which language and other symbols reflect and create the physical world.
Kent Ryden does not deny that the natural landscape of New England is shaped by many centuries of human manipulation, but he also takes the view that nature is everywhere, close to home as well as in more remote wilderness, in the city and in the countryside. InLandscape with Figures he dissolves the border between culture and nature to merge ideas about nature, experiences in nature, and material alterations of nature. Ryden takes his readers from the printed page directly to the field and back again-. He often bypasses books and goes to the trees from which they are made and the landscapes they evoke, then returns with a renewed appreciation for just what an interdisciplinary, historically informed approach can bring to our understanding of the natural world. By exploring McPhee's The Pine Barrens and Ehrlich's The Solace of Open Spaces, the coastal fiction of New England, surveying and Thoreau's The Maine Woods,Maine's abandoned Cumberland and Oxford Canal, and the natural bases for New England's historical identity, Ryden demonstrates again and again that nature and history are kaleidoscopically linked.
From the earliest memorials used by Native Americans to the elaborate structures of the present day, Richard Veit and Mark Nonestied use grave markers to take an off-beat look at New Jersey’s history that is both fascinating and unique. New Jersey Cemeteries and Tombstones presents a culturally diverse account of New Jersey’s historic burial places from High Point to Cape May and from the banks of the Delaware to the ocean-washed Shore, to explain what cemeteries tell us about people and the communities in which they lived. The evidence ranges from somber seventeenth-century decorations such as hourglasses and skulls that denoted the brevity of colonial life, to modern times where memorials, such as a life-size granite Mercedes Benz, reflect the materialism of the new millennium. Also considered are contemporary novelties such as pet cemeteries and what they reveal about today’s culture. To tell their story the authors visited more than 1,000 burial grounds and interviewed numerous monument dealers and cemetarians. This richly illustrated book is essential reading for history buffs and indeed anyone who has ever wandered inquisitively through their local cemeteries.
"The first in-depth presentation of the Nordic landscapes to be published in nearly twenty years. “Norden” -- the region along the northern edge of Europe bordered by Russia and the Baltic nations to the east and by North America to the west -- is a particularly fruitful site for the examination of the ever-evolving meaning of landscape and region as place. Contributors to this work reveal how Norden’s regions and people have been defined by and against the dominant culture of Europe while at the same time their landscapes and cultures have shaped and inspired Europe’s ways of life. Together, the essays provide a much-needed picture of this culturally rich and geographically varied part of the world."--pub. desc.
Series title taken from publisher website.
Rural life and culture hold a practical and symbolic importance in American society. A central tenet of the survival of our cherished values—and of ourselves as a species—is the stewardship of cultural diversity and the places that foster it, like rural America. These may be the places that teach us to use land to make a living and to make a life, to forge and carry on our identities, and to feel history. They may yield a harvest of policies for managing an environmental balancing act that will preserve essential resources for America's children's children. Power and Place: Preservation, Progress, and the Culture War over Land examines the ongoing culture wars that pit conservation again...
This volume supplements the acclaimed three volume set published in 1986 and consists of an annotated listing of American Studies monographs published between 1984 and 1988. There are more than 6,000 descriptive entries in a wide range of categories: anthropology and folklore, art and architecture, history, literature, music, political science, popular culture, psychology, religion, science and technology, and sociology.
When people think of archaeology, they commonly think of unearthing the remains of ancient civilizations in Egypt, Greece, Rome, Central or South America. But some fascinating history can be found in your own New Jersey backyard 3⁄4 if you know where to look. Richard Veit takes readers on a well-organized guided tour through four hundred years of Garden State development as seen through archaeology in Digging New Jerseys Past. This illustrated guidebook takes readers to some of the states most interesting discoveries and tells us what has been learned or is being learned from them. The diverse array of archaeological sites, drawn from all parts of the state, includes a seventeenth-century ...