Free lecture to focus on family camping’s affects on gender roles, environment

Dr. Peter Boag, professor of history at University of Colorado, Boulder, will be the 2007 Idaho Yesterday lecturer on Thursday, Sept. 27 at 7:30 p.m. in the Salmon River Suite at ISU's Pond Student Union Building.

Boag will speak on the topic “Family, Gender, and Conservation, 1945-1970: How Outdoor Recreation Undermined and Reinforced the Post-War Consensus.”

His free lecture is sponsored by the Idaho State University American Studies Program.

Boag's presentation will examine a social trend familiar to Idahoans: family camping. The family camping craze in the baby-boom era seemed to reinforce traditional gender roles and family unity, while inadvertently undermining these social patterns. Family camping also has had an impact on the environmental movement, and Boag will discuss ways in which the boom in camping during 1945-1970 prepared a generation of Americans to embrace modern environmentalism in the 1960s and beyond.

The American Studies Program is pleased to welcome Peter Boag back to ISU. Boag began his academic career at ISU as an assistant, associate and later full professor in the history department. In 2002 he joined the history department at Boulder where he currently serves as department chair. Boag is recognized as an expert in both environmental and gender history of the American West, and most recently his work has examined how those topics are interconnected.

This is the fourth Idaho Yesterdays Lecture to be sponsored by the American Studies Program at ISU. Text of the lectures appear as lead articles in Idaho Yesterdays, a scholarly journal of the Gem State’s history, edited at Idaho State University, produced at Boise State University and published by the Idaho State Historical Society.

Questions about the Idaho Yesterdays Lecture may be directed to Dr. Jennifer Eastman Attebery, director of the American Studies Program, (208) 282-2531.