Speaker Series: River History with Scot McFarlane   948 100918
Channel: Friends of Merrymeeting Bay
Date: 2021-05-13

Speaker Series, River History & the New Environmental Movement, features Scot McFarlane, River Historian.  Wednesday May 12th at 7 pm.

This presentation explores how river history can contribute to a new environmental movement in the 21st century. River history played a major role in the first successful environmental movement of the 1970s, informing key legal and political battles. Incorporating stories about people and their rivers has the potential to create more effective environmental organizations as they welcome people who have long been excluded from the movement. Finally, we will consider specific approaches and mindsets that make it possible to harness the power of river history without getting a PhD.

Scot McFarlane is a river historian who collaborates with environmental organizations to tell their river's history. His website riverhistories.org receives thousands of visitors from around the world. Scot's writing has appeared in Environmental History, The Journal of Southern History, and The Washington Post among others. Scot is completing his PhD in environmental history at Columbia University and has been awarded several fellowships including ones from the Mellon/ACLS Foundation and the Jefferson Scholars Foundation. A graduate of Bowdoin College, Scot spent two summers studying the ecology of Merrymeeting Bay and also met his wife while working on the Bay. Unusual for an undergraduate, Scot had his paper Defining a Nuisance chronicling the history of politics and pollution on the Androscoggin River, published while still at Bowdoin. You can learn more about Scot and his work at www.wsmcfarlane.com