View of the Mississippi River from Perot State Park

International Conference on Rivers and Civilization:
Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Major River Basins


La Crosse, Wisconsin USA
June 25-28, 2006

HOST AND PRESENTER INSTITUTIONS
University of Wisconsin-La Crosse Home Page National Mississippi River Museum and Aquarium Home Page

CONFERENCE SPEAKER

Meredith McKittrick(Georgetown University , USA):  Roundtable discussion Rivers in History.

Meredith McKittrick is an Associate Professor of History at Georgetown University. She graduated from the University of Texas, Austin summa cum laude in History and received her PhD in History from Stanford University. She has numerous publications in journals including the Journal of African History, Social Science History, and African Economic History. Other publications include several book chapters and her current work is a book manuscript entitled, Currents of Power: A History of Three Southern African Rivers where she examines how rivers, as the primary water resource in this semi-arid area, were used by people not just for subsistence activities but also as sources of political authority, land claims and social identities. The work is essentially a history of how people within three adjacent river basins have used the rivers and forged relationships around them, from the establishment of centralized authority along these riverbanks centuries ago to contemporary regional and local conflicts over water today. McKittrick has received many awards and fellowships including the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars Fellowship (2004-05), a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship (2004), the Robert F. Heizer Prize for best article in ethnohistory, and American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship (1998-99), and a Mellon Dissertation Fellowship (1994-95).