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[pct-l] fwd from:Philippe GOUVET



The original title of this message was "Help needed" so majordomo thought
it was a command and bounced it out of the list. Here it is a day late
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Date: Sat, 14 Feb 1998 13:39:39 +0100
To: pct-l@saffron.hack.net
From: Philippe GOUVET <philippe.gouvet@univ-pau.fr>
Subject: Help needed
                       
Dear fellow-hikers,
Sorry for intruding upon the list with a really personal matter but I am
looking for help. I teach American studies in a French university and I am
currently working on a PhD dissertation, the subject of which might be of
interest to some of you, by the way.More of this below...
I need to spend the summer in Berkeley (say from July 15 to September 10)
to work in the library. I definitely cannot afford to stay at a hotel for
so long, and I am looking for cheap accommodation within walking (hiking ?)
distance of the university. Any information, suggestion, advice very
welcome.
As for my dissertation, I am studying the ideology in nature in American
history, and more particularly the fear / rejection of nature and space.
What I mean is that in spite of all the 'official' writings and speeches on
the beauty of nature -the American becoming a new man thanks to the
wilderness-one can detect all through your history that fear of nature, and
wilderness,  and open spaces in general. Very tricky to explain in so few
words though. Nature was both glorified and ruthlessly exploited and in
many ways destroyed : in particular, a recurrent figure in 19th-century
landscape painting in The-Man-with-the-Ax. This is the paradox I would like
to analyze. All comments welcome.

Philippe Gouvet
PCTA's French 'Ambassador'

===================================
Philippe GOUVET
IUP Amenagement et Developpement Territorial
Universite de Pau et des Pays de l'Adour
B.P. 1148
Faculte des Lettres - 64013 PAU cedex - FRANCE
Tel.  05 59 06 51 54
Fax. 05 59 06 62 48
From outside France :
Home phone # (33) 5 59 06 51 54
Home fax #      (33) 5 59 06 62 48
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