The American Council of Learned Societies has awarded a $141,000 Collaborative Research Grant to Marsha Weisiger, of the History Department, and Stephanie LeMenager, of the English Department; together, they co-direct the UO Center for Environmental Futures.

The project, “To Speak of Common Places: A People’s History of Oregon’s Public Lands,” is designed to foster conversation among Oregonians about the future of the American West’s public lands, to explore various models of cooperative land management that Oregonians have created over the past half century, and to discover how best to find political and cultural middle ground regarding the futures of public lands. Fieldwork for the project will include video-interviews with land owners, land managers, environmental activists, scientists, and others in Harney County, Wallowa County, Jackson County, the North Coast, Portland, and the Willamette National Forest. The project will result in a co-authored book and an on-line companion piece, Living in Common: Oregon’s Public Lands, an interactive map that will feature clips from the interviews, as well as historical documents, visual images, and literature.

The Center for Environmental Futures is an interdisciplinary center whose participants include graduate students and faculty in the humanities, social sciences, architecture, art, art history, theater arts, and allied disciplines at the University of Oregon. The American Council of Learned Societies, a private, nonprofit federation of 75 national scholarly organizations, founded in 1919, is the preeminent representative of American scholarship in the humanities and related social sciences. Weisiger is the Julie and Rocky Dixon Chair of U.S. Western History, and LeMenager is the Barbara and Carlisle Moore Distinguished Professor of English.