Richard Jackson, a geography professor at Brigham Young University, will discuss “Toxic Tooele: The Emergence of the West as a Location for Other People’s Wastes” Tuesday, Oct. 18, at 7 p.m. in the Harold B. Lee Library auditorium.
His address is this year’s William Howard and Hazel Butler Peters Lecture in Western American Studies sponsored by the Charles M. Redd Center for Western Studies at BYU. Admission is free and the public is welcome.
Jackson will focus his lecture on Tooele County, Utah, which was labeled by a national magazine as one of the country’s most polluted places. His presentation will examine how Tooele was transformed from a typical western county reliant on ranching and mining to one that earned it the nickname “Toxic Tooele.”
He will also contrast residents’ views of Tooele with those of outsiders. The ongoing perception of outsiders that the American West is a marginal area leads them to conclude that it is an ideal place to locate activities that are unwanted elsewhere.
Jackson is a historical and cultural geographer who has researched and written about western communities and their geographic characteristics for 35 years. His current research interests focus on the sense of place that identifies certain communities in the public mind.
For more information, contact the Redd Center at (801) 422-4048.
