The Seventh Annual New Sweden History Conference will commemorate the tercentenary of Carl Linnaeus's birth. It will focus on the role of Pehr Kalm, Linnaeus's student Americans know best, in the development of the early North American scientific community and in the religious and ethnic history of southern New Jersey during the middle of the eighteenth century.
Saturday, October 13, 2007: Seventh New Sweden History Conference
Carl Linnaeus, Pehr Kalm, and the Early American Scientific Community
Trinity Episcopal (Old Swede's) Church, 1129 Kings Highway, Swedesboro, New Jersey
Conference Program
- Karen M. Reeds, independent scholar and guest curator of Come Into a New World: Linnaeus and America will present an appreciation of Linnaeus and his accomplishments.
- Peter O. Wacker, emeritus, professor of geography, Rutgers University, will describe the human and natural environment of southern New Jersey -- chiefly the areas Kalm visited -- in the middle of the 18th-century.
- Joel T. Fry, curator, Historic Bartram's Garden, will discuss the mid-18th-century North American scientific community and Linnaeus's and Kalm's relations with and contributions to it.
- Paula Ivaska Robbins, independent scholar and Pehr Kalm biographer, will speak about Kalm and his North American mission for Linnaeus.
- Edith A. Rohrman, Trinity Church, and Lorraine E. WIlliams, New Jersey State Museum, will discuss Kalm's contributions to the cultural and religious life of southern New Jersey while he was in North America, especially to Trinity Church and its community.
- Plus: Tours of the 18th-century church (Rohrman) and a nature walk of the sort Linnaeus led around the Uppsala, Sweden, of his day (Robert E. Savage, emeritus, professor of biology, Swarthmore College).
More information about the New Sweden History Conference will soon be posted on The Swedish Colonial Society's web site>>
The New Sweden History Conference is supported by grants from the New Jersey Council for the Humanities, a state partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities; the New Jersey Historical Commission, Department of State; and the Finlandia Foundation.