Here's a link to Chura's faculty page at the University of Akron, where he teaches in the English Department. And here's a link to Thoreau the Land Surveyor at the University of Florida Press.
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| Walden Pond, manuscript survey (ink on paper), [1846]. |
15 January 2012
Literary and Scientific, combined with Land-Surveying
That's what Henry David Thoreau listed as his "Occupation" in the questionnaire he returned to the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1853. Thoreau's self-description applies just as well to the book in which I found this reference, Patrick Chura's Thoreau the Land Surveyor (University Press of Florida, 2010), which offers fascinating insights into Thoreau's efforts to live by his own ethical and ecological credos and to work as a surveyor in Concord. The work is not just interesting because of what it says about Thoreau, but also because of how it says it--blending the "Literary and Scientific," complete with illustrations of Thoreau's techniques and accounts of Chura's own attempts to reproduce them. It's a book that's given me much to think about and some ideas about how to proceed with my own project about colonial surveyors.
Here's a link to Chura's faculty page at the University of Akron, where he teaches in the English Department. And here's a link to Thoreau the Land Surveyor at the University of Florida Press.
(This survey of Walden by Thoreau comes from the Concord Free Public Library
Thoreau survey collection. They have a wonderful online exhibition here.)
Here's a link to Chura's faculty page at the University of Akron, where he teaches in the English Department. And here's a link to Thoreau the Land Surveyor at the University of Florida Press.
