Omohundro Institute and University of North Carolina Press
American Curiosity: Cultures of Natural History in the Colonial British Atlantic World
Key Metrics
- Susan Scott Parrish
- Omohundro Institute and University of North Carolina Press
- Paperback
- 9780807856789
- 9.24 X 6.06 X 0.81 inches
- 1.1 pounds
- History > United States - Colonial Period (1600-1775)
- English
Secure TransactionBook Description
Delving into an understudied archive of letters, Parrish uncovers early descriptions of American natural phenomena as well as clues to how people in the colonies construed their own identities through the natural world. Although hierarchies of gender, class, institutional learning, place of birth or residence, and race persisted within the natural history community, the contributions of any participant were considered valuable as long as they supplied novel data or specimens from the American side of the Atlantic. Thus Anglo-American nonelites, women, Indians, and enslaved Africans all played crucial roles in gathering and relaying new information to Europe.
Recognizing a significant tradition of nature writing and representation in North America well before the Transcendentalists, American Curiosity also enlarges our notions of the scientific Enlightenment by looking beyond European centers to find a socially inclusive American base to a true transatlantic expansion of knowledge.
Author Bio
I am a Professor in the Department of English and the Program in the Environment at the University of Michigan, and Arthur F. Thurnau Professor. I began my career in the 1990s as a cultural historian of the British Atlantic world, with a focus on American plantation zones, and a particular interest in how American nature and American races were co-constructed in the 17th and 18th centuries through scientific networks.
Retaining my interests in the nature/race/knowledge bundle, but increasingly attending to environmental history, I turned my attention to a 20th-century ecocatastrophe in the US cotton kingdom of the Lower Mississippi Valley. Most recently, I have been focusing on contemporary fiction, film and photography to see how this long history of the plantation, and especially Black connections with, and alienations from, the natural world are being imagined by artists today.
I have served on the editorial boards of American Literature, Early American Literature, the Winterthur Portfolio, and have just joined The Faulkner Journal. I have been a council member at the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, have served on the Executive Committee of the MLA’s “American Literature to 1800” Division, and been elected as a member of the American Antiquarian Society.
Closer to home, I have served as a Director of Undergraduate Studies in English, and as its Associate Chair. I began a new role as Chair of the Michigan Society of Fellows in January 2021.
Source: University of Michigan
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