Events

Environmental History Seminar

Sex in the Reeds: Disciplining Nature and Cultivating Virtue in the Back Bay Fens

Zachary Nowak, Harvard University
Comment: Phyllis Andersen, Independent Scholar
Tuesday, January 10, 2017, 5:15PM - 7:30PM

With the introduction of discourse about “invasive exotic species” in the 1980s, the reason for the removal of reeds planted along the Muddy River shifted, from socio-sexual disapproval of illicit activities to “ecoxenophobia.” This essay aims to historicize “exotic” species to show that their labeling as such is a social construct, not a biological fact. Improving the Fens through planting and weeding has for more than a century really been a project to improve people.