Moral Geography
Maps, Missionaries, and the American Frontier
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Columbia University Press
Published:4th Apr '03
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
While the political implications of the mapping of American expansion have been examined, this book explores the close and complex relationship between mapping and missionizing on the American frontier. Amy DeRogatis explores the struggles of those involved, from settlers to geographers.Moral Geography traces the development of a moral basis for American expansionism, as Protestant missionaries, using biblical language and metaphors, imaginatively conjoined the cultivation of souls with the cultivation of land and made space sacred. While the political implications of the mapping of American expansion have been much studied, this is the first major study of the close and complex relationship between mapping and missionizing on the American frontier. Moral Geography provides a fresh approach to understanding nineteenth-century Protestant home missions in Ohio's Western Reserve. Through the use of maps, letters, religious tracts, travel narratives, and geographical texts, Amy DeRogatis recovers the struggles of settlers, land surveyors, missionaries, and geographers as they sought to reconcile their hopes and expectations for a Promised Land with the realities of life on the early American frontier.
Moral Geography provides a much better guidebook to the region and its religion, and DeRogatis never lets us get lost, taking us along a scholarly path that seems both familiar and fresh at the same time. -- Gregory Nobles Journal of American History Interesting and innovative... Most readers ofMoral Geography will appreciate DeRogatis's attempt to 'read' material sources in seeking to understand the landscape of the Western Reserve. -- Lydia Huffman Hoyle Regster of the Kentucky Historical Society ...the brief narrative here does little justice to the nuanced deconstruction of maps, letters, biography, and travel literature that comprises the heart of DeRogatis's work. From close readings of these texts she has skillfully teased out a language in her sources... -- William H. Bergmann, University of Cincinnati Ohio History Moral Geography does a great service by introducing those who felt the tension between new and old orders. -- Kathleen Flake Journal of Religion Amy DeRogatis' sketch of moral geography on the American frontier has opened up a rich and fertile vein of scholarship. -- David N. Livingstone Books & Culture Innovative new study of the religious settlement of Connecticut's "Western Reserve."... A model of interdisciplinary scholarship, and her new study will enjoy wide readership. -- Douglas L. Winiarski Religious Studies Review
ISBN: 9780231127882
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
256 pages