MMC Welcomes Dr. Sellars as Featured Speaker March 17

Dr. Richard West Sellars, will be in residence at the College, March 16-20, 2009. Dr. Sellars’ visit to Marymount Manhattan connects with The 2008-2009 Year of the Environment, a college-wide effort to raise awareness of environmental issues through coursework, events, and activities. Dr. Sellars’ book, Preserving Nature in the National Parks: A History (Yale University Press, 1997), was the catalyst for a multi-year budget initiative by Congress to revitalize natural resource management and science in the national parks. The initiative is currently funded at about $80 million per year, and has reached a cumulative total of more than half-a-billion dollars. “Preserving Nature,” which has received international notice, is a critical study of the conflicts between traditional scenery-and-tourism management and emerging ecological concepts in the national parks, and spans the period from the creation of Yellowstone National Park in 1872 to the late 20th century. Currently, Dr. Sellars is preparing a companion study to “Preserving Nature”— a history of evolving policies and practices in the management of historic and archeological sites in the National Park System. Portions of this current study have been published as “Pilgrim Places: Civil War Battlefields, Historic Preservation, and America’s First National Military Parks, 1863-1900,” (Eastern National Press, 2005); and “A Very Large Array: Early Federal Historic Preservation—The Antiquities Act, Mesa Verde, and the National Park Service Act,” Natural Resources Journal (University of New Mexico School of Law, Volume 47, no.2, 2007). He is volunteering his time to complete the cultural resource history. 

Dr. Sellars began his career with the National Park Service in the mid-1960s as a seasonal naturalist in Grand Teton National Park. Throughout his career, Dr. Sellars has visited nearly 370 of the more than 390 units of the National Park System. Dr. Sellars’ articles on American history and on cultural and natural resource preservation have appeared in numerous national publications. He has lectured on preservation philosophy, policy, and practice at many universities, and has presented at a number of conferences including the Thomas Moran Symposium at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; the Abraham Lincoln 197th Birthday Commemoration, Springfield, Illinois; the Greater Yellowstone Coalition Conference,West Yellowstone, Montana; and the Mesa Verde Centennial Archeological Conference. In 1999 and 2000, Sellars served as president of The George Wright Society—an internationally focused organization dedicated to the preservation of natural and cultural parks and preserves. For two years he was a member of the National Park Service’s National Wilderness Steering Committee. He also spent two terms on the board of the Forest History Society, and served on the Historic Design Review Board for the City of Santa Fe. Dr. Sellars received his doctorate in American history and literature from the University of Missouri-Columbia in 1972. 

The Jack and Lewis Rudin Distinguished Visiting Scholars Lecture is free. Seating is limited. To R.S.V.P., call (212) 517-0473.

Published: February 12, 2009