The public is invited to listen in on “A Prairie Conversation” with Wes Jackson and friends Donald Worster and Aleksandra Jaeschke from 6-8 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 11, in Pioneer Hall 325 on the campus of Kansas Wesleyan University.
The topic of the conversation will be working with nature as a collaborator and the positive effects of developing perennial agriculture.
Presentations by Worster and Jaeschke will be followed by a question-and-answer session moderated by Jackson.
Worster is the Joyce and Elizabeth Hall Professor of U.S. History at the University of Kansas and is considered a founder of American environmental history. He is a recipient of the Bancroft Prize for “Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s” and a recipient of the National Outdoor Book Award, Spur Award and Byron Caldwell Smith Award for “A River Running West.” He has written biographies of John Wesley Powell and John Muir.
Jaeschke is an architect and an associate professor of Architecture and Sustainable Design at the University of Texas at Austin. She was the winner of the Harvard Graduate School of Design’s 2019 Wheelwright Prize. Born and raised in Poland, she holds a Doctor of Design degree from the Harvard Graduate School of Design, and an AA Diploma from the Architectural Association in London. A book based on her doctoral dissertation, entitled The Greening of America’s Building Codes: Promises and Paradoxes, was published by Princeton Architectural Press in 2022.
Jackson, a 1958 graduate of Kansas Wesleyan and a former faculty member, is the co-founder and former president of The Land Institute in Salina. The Land Institute is a science-based research organization working to develop an alternative to destructive agricultural practices. Its work is dedicated to advancing perennial grain crops, such as Kernza, and polyculture farming solutions.
This “A Prairie Conversation” event is sponsored by Jackson and the Community Resilience Hub at Kansas Wesleyan and The Land Institute, with funding from the Resilience Studies Consortium. It is free and open to the public.
Release by Jean Kozubowski
