front cover of Quabbin
Quabbin
The Accidental Wilderness
Thomas Conuel
University of Massachusetts Press, 1990
When one looks out on the quiet waters and forested hills of Quabbin Reservoir in west central Massachusetts, it is hard to imagine that the area was once dotted with buildings and farmlands or that it echoed with the activity of several villages and towns. Today, the daytime silence may be broken only by the cry of a hawk overhead or the slap of a plunging fish, and the evening calm, by the lonesome howl of a coyote. But in the nineteenth century, things were quite different.

In 1895, engineers for the Metropolitan Water Board began to search the state of Massachusetts for a site on which to construct a reservoir to supply water for the growing city of Boston. Sixty-five miles west of the city, in a region of high hills and running streams known as the Swift River Valley, they found what they were looking for. When Quabbin Reservoir was finally completed and filled in 1946, the engineers had created the third largest body of fresh water in New England and hand accomplished one of the larger public works projects of its time. They had also uprooted and displaced the valley's inhabitants, leveled and flooded four towns and six villages--and formed a magnificent wilderness on some 85,000 acres.

The valley that was once known for its picturesque villages and mill ponds is now, over forty years later, home to a wide array of wildlife. Coyote, bobcat, and deer flourish, and Quabbin's eagle restoration project, begun in 1982, produced the first nesting pair of bald eagles in Massachusetts in almost a century. Today, the bald eagle population at Quabbin is estimated at forty-one birds.

But this accidental wilderness is being increasingly threatened. As early as the 1950s, the sounds of power boats occasionally intruded on the peaceful silence of the waters. In more recent years, acid rain, ozone and other pollutants, the ravages of a herd of hungry deer, and demands for increased recreational use are all jeopardizing Quabbin's waters and forests.

This book tells the story of Quabbin, tracing Quabbin's history, describing its natural resources, and discussing the environmental challenges it currently faces. The original edition, issued by the Massachusetts Audubon Society in 1981, has now been expanded and updated.
[more]
front cover of A Question of Sex
A Question of Sex
Feminism, Rhetoric, and Differences That Matter
Kristan Poirot
University of Massachusetts Press, 2014
By the mid-1990s feminist theorists and critics began to challenge conventional thinking about sex difference and its relationship to gender and sexuality. Scholars such as Anne Fausto-Sterling and Judith Butler troubled the sex-gender/nature-nurture divide. Some have asserted that these questions about sex are much too abstract to contribute to a valuable understanding of the material politics faced by feminist movements. In A Question of Sex, Kristan Poirot challenges this assumption and demonstrates that contemporary theories about sex, gender, identity, and difference compel a rethinking of the history of feminist movements and their rhetorical practices.

Poirot focuses on five case studies—the circulation of Sojourner Truth's "Ain't I a Woman?" in early and contemporary feminist contexts; the visual rhetorics of the feminist self-help health movement; the public discourse of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and early nineteenth-century ideas about suffrage, sex, and race; the conflicts over lesbian sexuality in the 1960s and 1970s; and the discourse that surrounds twenty-first-century SlutWalks. In the process, Poirot rethinks the terms through which we understand U.S. feminist movements to explore the ways feminism has questioned sexed distinctions and practices over time. She emphasizes the importance of reading feminist engagements with sex as rhetorical endeavors—practices that are shaped by the instrumental demands of movements, the exigent situations that call for feminists to respond, and the enduring philosophical traditions that circulate in U.S. political contexts., reviewing a previous edition or volume
[more]

Send via email Share on Facebook Share on Twitter