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VERSION:2.0
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CALSCALE:GREGORIAN
X-WR-CALNAME:Jonathan Beecher Field – “The Ordering of Towns: Exception
 al Abstractions on the New England Frontier”
X-WR-TIMEZONE:Eastern Time (US & Canada)
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260810T050520Z
UID:tag:localist.com\,2008:EventInstance_4424683
DTSTART:20180227T080000Z
DTEND:20180227T090000Z
DESCRIPTION:Jonathan Beecher Field is an associate professor in the departm
 ent of English at Clemson University.There are few social formations from 
 early America as beloved as the New England town. It can represent nostalg
 ic innocence\, often represented by departures from innocence like The Sca
 rlet Letter or Peyton Place.  At the same time\, the New England town pers
 ists as a template for a fantasy of idealized democracy\, embodied in the 
 New England town meeting. One vestige of this fantasy is the ritual  of th
 e dozen or so citizens of Dixville Notch\, NH\, exercising their privilege
  to cast the first votes for the President of the United States each elect
 ion cycle. There is\, it appears\, something special about this small town
  in New Hampshire that makes it an exceptionally pure manifestation of dem
 ocracy. The 17th century Puritan founders of these New England towns did n
 ot treat the form with the same regard it enjoys today. Texts like John Wi
 nthrop’s “Essay on the Ordering of Towns\,” and Edward Johnson’s W
 onder-Working Providence suggest that these settlers were not at all about
  theformation of towns\, and conceived of them as abstract structures inte
 nded to occupy the wilderness and displace Indians. In “The Ordering of 
 Towns\,” Winthrop conjures not a city on a hill\, but a grid of nameless
 \, abstract towns\, extending indefinitely toward the horizon.This disjunc
 tion between social formations and physical forms is what animates this pa
 per. The scholarship on the early New England town\, a staple of the New S
 ocialHistory that was a focus for New England historians working during th
 e Cold War\, suggests a kind of atavistic celebration of a purer kind of d
 emocracy. Many of these towns\, however\, are less towns than frontier gar
 risons. In a different context\, Giorgio Agamben argues that the camp\, no
 t the polis\, is the nomos of modernity. In the backwoods of New England\,
  there is evidence for this claim. We also see echoes of this tension in o
 ur current moment. Dixville Notch is not far from dozens of towns in Maine
  with names like “T4 R5 NBKP\,” forming grids of nameless\, uninhabite
 d towns\, or networks of nothing. I contend that rereading early American 
 literature for tension between the exceptional town and the abstract town 
 has the potential to unsettle our understanding of this cherished symbol o
 f American democracy.
GEO:33.951405;-83.376529
LOCATION:Zell B. Miller Learning Center\, 207
SUMMARY:Jonathan Beecher Field – “The Ordering of Towns: Exceptional Ab
 stractions on the New England Frontier”
URL;VALUE=URI:https://calendar.uga.edu/event/jonathan_beecher_field_the_ord
 ering_of_towns_exceptional_abstractions_on_the_new_england_frontier
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END:VCALENDAR