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Thursday 27 April @2pm / Returning North with the Spring:
Retracing the Journey of Naturalist Edwin Way Teale
John Harris, Westmoreland, NH
In 1947, Edwin Way Teale, the most popular naturalist in the decade between Aldo Leopold and Rachel Carson, followed the progress of spring over four months from the Everglades to the summit of Mount Washington. His best-selling book, North with the Spring, recounts the epic journey he and his wife Nellie undertook. In 2012, John Harris set out to retrace Teale's route, stopping at unfamiliar wild places on the same calendar date on which Teale visited. Using Teale's journal notes and photographs, Harris examined and compared changes in the flora, fauna, and lives of the people along the way. His account documents the losses, details the transformations, and celebrates the victories, for a remarkable number of east coast refuges have grown wilder during the intervening years.
John R. Harris is currently an adjunct faculty member in Environmental Science at Franklin Pierce University. He holds a Ph.D. in British and American literature from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and has taught courses in nature writing, environmental literacy, regional history, American literature and composition at Franklin Pierce University. In addition, he has organized and helped to edit two regional anthologies, Where the Mountain Stands Aloneand Beyond the Notches: Stories of North Country New Hampshire.
Thursday 25 May @2pm / Exemplary Country Estates of New Hampshire
Cristina Ashjian, Moultonborough, NH
In the early 20th century, the New Hampshire Board of Agriculture launched a program to boost the rural economy and promote tourism through the sale of abandoned farms to summer residents. After introducing the country house movement, Cristina Ashjian focuses attention on some of the great country estates featured in the New Hampshire program between 1902 and 1913. Which private estates were recognized as exemplary, and who were their owners? Using historic images and texts, Ashjian discusses well-known estates now open to the public such as The Fells on Lake Sunapee, The Rocks in Bethlehem, Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site in Cornish, and she includes local examples when possible.
Cristina Ashjian is an art historian and an independent scholar based in Moultonborough, where she is presently the chair of the Moultonborough Heritage Commission. Her current research focuses on late 19th- and early 20th-century country estates. Ashjian holds an MA in the History of Art from the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London and a PhD in Modern Art and Architecture from Northwestern University.
Supported by a grant from New Hampshire Humanities
