The Second Iowa Conference on the Wild: "Live Well, Live Wild: A Community Concourse on Undomesticating and Rewilding"

["Dean, Thomas K" <thomas-k-dean@uiowa.edu>]

Please distribute widely.

 

The Second Iowa Conference on the Wild

"Live Well, Live Wild:  A Community Concourse on Undomesticating and
Rewilding"

 

Partners: The Iowa Project on Place Studies at The University of Iowa,
The Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation's Agrestal Fund, Iowa Department of
Natural Resources, The Standing By Words Center, The Ice Cube Press, The
University of Iowa Press, The Leopold Heritage Group

 

April 24-25, 2006

 

Richey Ballroom, Iowa Memorial Union, The University of Iowa, Iowa City,
IA

 

Keynote Speakers:  Bill McKibben, Stephanie Mills

 

The human relationship with the wild comprises a complex of positions
and actions:  attitudes, values, assumptions, interests, worshippings,
uses, abuses, domination, reverence, exploitation, stewardship.  This
"concourse" will ask attendees to confront themselves, each other, and
our society in general regarding how we have lost the "wild" in Iowa
specifically and our society generally, and how we can bring it back
into our imaginations, our values, our actions, and our land.  

 

Much of the conference will be devoted to audience-centered discussion;
our discussion leaders will come from a variety of backgrounds and
perspectives.  With keynotes sounded by our visiting writers, Bill
McKibben and Stephanie Mills, we will ask attendees to examine
ourselves, individually and culturally, focused especially on the ways
that we live in the world.  We desire that attendees leave with a sense
of hope and a set of ideas and actions that they will be excited to
implement as we seek to "rewild."  At the same time, we must confront
our individual and our shared attitudes and actions that separate us
from the wild and that harm or destroy it.  In essence, we must confront
our domestication:  the ways that we have exerted control over the
wild-our own wild natures as well as the wild of the natural world
outside of our individual selves and society-through the way we build
and expand our towns, cities, and road systems; the way we participate
in an industrial food system; the way we alter nature for our own
purposes-recreational, industrial, cultural, lifestyle; the way we
express our relationship with the wild-imaginatively, spiritually,
philosophically.  Through a combination of confronting our failures and
realizing our possibilities, we hope conference attendees will come away
from the program ready and excited to embrace change.

 

An e-mail discussion list will help begin the conversation before the
conference, and all are invited to participate.

 

For complete conference information, please visit
www.uiowa.edu/~ipops/conferenceonthewild.  Inquiries may be directed to
thomas-k-dean@uiowa.edu.