Wednesday, 04 Feb 2015
CEAH Fellowship: The Literary Aftershocks of the New Madrid Earthquakes
Matthew Sivils, CEAH fellow, will discuss the cultural reverberations of the New Madrid Earthquakes of 1811-1812, one of the most powerful natural disasters to strike North America in recorded history. He will examine how the fictionalization of such a cataclysm in early American fiction served as an indicator of growing environmental anxiety among Americans as the nation moved away from its agricultural origins.