The environmental imagination and mid-nineteenth-century American politics
This dissertation investigates the environmental imagination of mid-nineteenth-century Americans, studying ideas about the natural world during a transformative period in which technological innovation revolutionised how Americans interacted with nature on the land, in the factory, and on the rails. The historiographical consensus holds that these developments fuelled Americans' belief that nature had become alienated from humanity, a savage realm to be civilised by new technologies. By studying the ways in which ideas about nature intersected with mid-nineteenth-century political culture, my research tells a different story, one in which a firm belief in the interconnections between humans and nature was central. In investigating sources such as newspapers, Congressional records, and personal correspondence, I show that Americans drew upon the latest scientific research to position their society in dialogue with the natural world, rather than alienated from it. While there was a clear awareness that technological innovation expanded human agency, the belief that human bodies and societies were subject to powerful environmental forces and should be brought into line with natural laws was pervasive. I trace
Griffin, Matthew Robert
The environmental imagination and mid-nineteenth-century American politics. This dissertation investigates the environmental imagination of mid-nineteenth-century Americans, studying ideas about the natural world during a transformative period in which technological innovation revolutionised how Americans interacted with nature on the land, in the factory, and on the rails. The historiographical consensus holds that these developments fuelled Americans' belief that nature had become alienated from humanity, a savage realm to be civilised by new technologies. By studying the ways in which ideas about nature intersected with mid-nineteenth-century political culture, my research tells a different story, one in which a firm belief in the interconnections between humans and nature was central. In investigating sources such as newspapers, Congressional records, and personal correspondence, I show that Americans drew upon the latest scientific research to position their society in dialogue with the natural world, rather than alienated from it. While there was a clear awareness that technological innovation expanded human agency, the belief that human bodies and societies were subject to powerful environmental forces and should be brought into line with natural laws was pervasive. I trace
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