Bernadette Pérez, a Princeton lecturer in the Council of the Humanities, History and American studies, and the Cotsen Postdoctoral Fellow in Race and Ethnicity Studies, will present, “Manifesting America in the Colorado Beet Fields,” at 4:30 p.m. Wed., April 3, in East Pyne, Room 111. This is the third talk in the Spring 2019 Environmental Humanities Colloquium.

Pérez will use the history of the Colorado beet fields to explore the relationship between sugar, scientific agriculture and the intensification of settler colonialism at the turn of the 20th century. Beets powered the nation’s expansion after the Civil War and transatlantic sugar-beet culture offered a framework for “re-landscaping” the West. Pérez will discuss how experts attempted to resolve the frictions between settler fantasies and the failure, resistance and contingency they actually experienced on the Great Plains.

Series Background: The Environmental Humanities Colloquium sponsored by the Princeton Environmental Institute (PEI) aims to build an intellectual community of Princeton scholars and graduate students from all backgrounds whose work is animated by — or intersects with — issues central to the environmental humanities. The Spring 2019 Colloquium is organized by PEI associated faculty members Rachel Price, associate professor of Spanish and Portuguese, and Erika Lorraine Milam, professor of history.