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