Donald Worster Seminar

4-10-03

Brink Faculty Lounge

Notes by N. Chaney

Introduction by Dale Goble, who described his first meeting with Dr. Worster in 1993 as a “transformative experience.” Worster, he said, is “infamous in reshaping perception of the American West … (and) environmental history.”

Right off the bat, Dr. Worster acknowledged being “uncomfortable with the phrase, ‘sense of place,’” calling it “smarmy.” He prefers to think of “sense” in the context of using one’s senses to think intelligently about places, not just about “warm, fuzzy feelings.” He identified sense of place with conscious awareness of regional identity.

Dr. Worster asked the audience to “pardon (his) enthusiasm for the Great Plains,” explaining that they give him “great joy… (and are) the best of all.” He went on to describe them as “splendid (and) spectacular,” and to confess that his “greatest regret as a scholar is not having written more about the Great Plains” (yet). He said that according to census figures, 60% of the counties on the Great Plains lost population between 1990 and 2000. He attributed to change to an aging population of farmers and the fact that the economic foundations of farming are shrinking. He said that those “push factors” are clear, but suggested that the “pull factors” that draw people away may not be as obvious…

Dr. Worster recommended Wes Jackson’s Becoming Native to the Place. In that context, he asserted that the only real major at institutions such as the University of Kansas is “upward mobility,” which almost always means “geographic mobility.” Higher education’s drive for internationalizing curricula delivers the message that “nothing matters here…It’s the international horizons that matter,” Worster said. He believes that in that way, universities feed students discontent regarding sense of place. Exiles Returned by (Cowley??) is another book on that subject that he recommends.

So, how can a university contribute to sense of place? At Kansas, they have an “On this day in the history of this campus…” Web page. They encourage outreach activities. They digitalized the Kansas Collection for those who can’t come to the campus. The model at KU is derived from Bill Farris’ (??) template for southern culture at Mississippi State (??) When Mary DuPree asked Dr. Worster about the value of indoctrinating new faculty to place, he added that KU offers a wheatland whirlwind tour, on which newcomers on campus are acquainted with their new place.

Worster asked the audience to consider the possibility that “whatever region exists here (in the west) was created by James J. Hill.” He spoke of a cultural maturation that has taken place in the west since the growth of the railroads. He paraphrased Stegner quote from Wendell Barry: “Americans are not place people, but displaced people…”

He likened the division between East and West to that between the North and South, predating the Civil War. The West itself is divided too, according to attitudes about land use and ownership, public vs. private, urban vs. rural, domestic farm subsidies vs. globalism. Two-hundred billion dollars will be spent on ag subsidies over the next 10 years. Two-billion dollars are spent on irrigation subsidies each year. Shall economic development plans be devised at the federal level to save small towns? In France, for example, the government believes that a movie theater and a café make a town viable, so will pay to develop them. Perhaps, the U.S. Government could decide that it takes airport service and internet service to vitalize a regional economy, so could pay to develop those.

Dr. Worster was scheduled to speak to the larger UI/Moscow area community the evening of April 10 and at WSU on April 11