I'm interested in putting together a panel proposal for the Conference
on New York State History to be held next June at Fordham University.  I
would like to present a paper on Jane Colden, an eighteenth-century
botanist in the Hudson Valley.  The paper would fit with panels on a
couple of different themes, such as

    --writing individual biography, particularly the issue of how the
life of an individual illuminates (or doesn't illuminate) larger
historical developments.

    --the botany/landscape of the Hudson Valley, particularly the issue
of making the Hudson Valley visible as a distinctive place to a larger
world.

    --eighteenth-century culture and society in New York as part of the
British Empire and/or becoming distinctive.

Anyone care to join me?  Please respond off-list.

Thanks!
Sara S. Gronim
Department of History
New Jersey Institute of Technology