The Land Speaks New Voices at the Intersection of Oral and Environmental History

About this book

The Land Speaks explores the intersection of two vibrant fields, oral history and environmental studies. Ranging across farm and forest, city and wilderness, river and desert, this collection of fourteen oral histories gives voice to nature and the stories it has to tell. These essays consider topics as diverse as environmental activism, wilderness management, public health, urban exploring, and smoke jumping. They raise questions about the roles of water, neglected urban spaces, land ownership concepts, protectionist activism, and climate change.

Covering almost every region of the United States and part of the Caribbean, Lee and Newfont and their diverse collection of contributors address the particular contributions oral history can make toward understanding issues of public land and the environment. In the face of global warming and events like the Flint water crisis, environmental challenges are undoubtedly among the most pressing issues of our time. These essays suggest that oral history can serve both documentary and problem-solving functions as we grapple with these challenges.

Contents

Introduction Listening to the Land through Oral History
      Kathryn Newfont with Debbie Lee

Part I: Building Fluency
Chapter 1 Memories of Precipitation: Gathering and Assessing Ecological Oral Histories in an Era of Climate Change
      Peter Friederici
Chapter 2 Fostering Relationships with the Wild: Oral History's Role in Recreation Management
      Alison Steiner and Daniel R. Williams
Chapter 3 The Public Significance of the Private Farm
      Nathaniel Van Yperen

Part II: Listening through Place
Chapter 4 Documenting Tension on Idaho's Public Lands: A Case Study from the Idaho Oral History Center Collections
      Troy J Reeves and Linda Morton-Keithley
Chapter 5 Territorial: A Collective Oral History of Land and Indigeneity in the Carib Territory of Dominica
      Emma Gaalaas Mullaney

Part III: Fostering Community through Environment
Chapter 6 Resurrecting Dead Lands: Two Oral Histories of Urban Explorers
      Ben S. Bunting Jr.
Chapter 7 When the Flood Came for Good: Personal Stories and Impersonal Change in the Savannah River Valley
      Robert P. Shapard
Chapter 8 (Re)Constructing Community Commons and Traditions: Urban Gardening and Community Spaces in the Haddington Neighborhood of West Philadelphia
      Patrick Hurley, Shakiya Canty, and Walter Greason

Part IV: Attending to Public Land
Chapter 9 "Sky-Fighters of the Forest": Conscientious Objectors, African American Paratroopers, and the U.S. Forest Service Smokejumping Program in World War II
      Annie Hanshew
Chapter 10 Filling the Gaps with Silence: Women's Stories and the Movement to Save the Indiana Dunes
      Brittany Bayless Fremion
Chapter 11 "A sense of comfort and belonging in the woods": The Narrative of Laurel Munson Boyers
      Brenna Lissoway and Lu Ann Jones

Part V: Interviewing the Environment
Chapter 12 Thinking Like a File Cabinet: Eco-Cruising in the Bitterroot
      James G. Lewis
Chapter 13 Legend Days: Becoming Animal in the Selway Bitterroot Wilderness
      Debbie Lee
Chapter 14 The Many Lives of Newtown Creek: A New York Story
      Betsy McCully

Further Reading
Contributors
Index

Customer Reviews

Biography

Debbie Lee is a professor of English at Washington State University. She is author or editor of six books of literary history including Slavery and the Romantic Imagination and Literature Science and Exploration in the Romantic Era: Bodies of Knowledge (Cambridge), and her creative nonfiction has appeared in Narrative, Montreal Review, Terrain, Los Angeles Review of Books and elsewhere. She co-directed, with Dennis Baird, the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness History Project, which includes forty-four oral histories and a digital and analog archive.

Kathryn Newfont is Associate Professor of History at the University of Kentucky. Her book, Blue Ridge Commons: Environmental Activism and Forest Politics in Western North Carolina (University of Georgia), won the 2012 Thomas Wolfe Memorial Literary Award and the Appalachian Studies Association's 2012 Weatherford Award for Non-fiction. The book grew from oral history interviews conducted through UNC-Chapel Hill's Southern Oral History Program, and had fellowship support from the National Endowment for the Humanities.


Contributors:
- Ben S. Bunting Jr.
- Shakiya Canty
- Brittany Bayless Fremion
- Peter Friederici
- Walter Greason
- Annie Hanshew
- Patrick T. Hurley
- Lu Ann Jones
- Debbie Lee
- James G. Lewis
- Brenna L. Lissoway
- Betsy McCully
- Linda Morton-Keithley
- Emma Gaalaas Mullaney
- Kathryn Newfont
- Troy J Reeves
- Robert P. Shapard
- Alison Steiner
- Nathaniel Van Yperen
- Daniel R. Williams