VIU FACULTY EXPLORE THE MEANING OF "GOING BACK TO THE LAND"

September 25, 2013 - 3:52am

Faced with global capitalism, genetically modified food, and a popular culture that does little to inspire and enrich their lives, many people in modern day North America are making the decision to head ‘back to the land’.

While the present day desire to build a simpler, healthier, more authentic life in a rural setting is prevalent, is it really anything new?

Nothing new at all, in fact, say Vancouver Island University Faculty members, Dr. Anna Atkinson and Dr. Toni Smith, who together will kick off the Arts and Humanities Colloquium Series on Friday, Sept. 27 with their presentation, “Back Before We Got There: North American Back-to-the-Land Narratives”. The presentation, from 10 to 11:30 am in the Malaspina Theatre (Building 310) on the VIU campus, is open to the public and admission is free.

Atkinson and Smith, both Faculty in VIU’s Department of English, will focus their presentation on the wide variety of past and present writings that work to idealize the ‘good life’ in the backcountry.

They will point to prominent 19th-century American poet/philosopher Henry David Thoreau’s influential book Walden; or, Life in the Woods as a prime example of a written work that popularized the idea that a stripped-down agrarian existence held the key to restoring our essential humanity.

“We’re turning a critical eye toward other factors that have inspired North Americans, past and present, to seek out the rural hinterland in search of renewal,” said Atkinson, sharing the example of those who have banded with others to build rural-based religious communities.

Smith says she finds the “idyllic Little House on the Prairie model of the homestead” particularly intriguing, especially in light of its “colonial roots and questionable ecological soundness.”

A time for questions and discussion will follow the presentation by Smith and Atkinson.

Now in its fifth year, the Arts and Humanities Colloquium Series highlights research being done by VIU Faculty through the presentation of admission free public lectures open to students and the general public. The Series continues on Friday, Oct. 18 when Professor Jay Ruzesky from the Department of Creative Writing and Journalism will present “Amundsen Then and Now: The End of Heroic Exploration 1912,” a reflection on the Antarctic journey taken by Ruzesky in 2012 in honour of the groundbreaking expedition that his ancestor Roald Amundsen had undertaken 100 years earlier.

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