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<font face="Palatino"><font face="Palatino">Title: <i><b>The Awful
Crater and the Eternal God: Volcanoes and Missionary Science
in Nineteenth-Century Hawai‘i</b></i><br>
<br>
</font>Science and Religion Lecture March 28, 2013 at 5:30 in
Franklin Patterson Hall Main Lecture Hall, Hampshire College<br>
Tracy Neal Leavelle, Ph. D.<font face="Palatino"><br>
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href="http://www.creighton.edu/ccas/history/faculty/facultyprofiles/leavelle/index.php">http://www.creighton.edu/ccas/history/faculty/facultyprofiles/leavelle/index.php</a><br>
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Abstract: In 1852, Mauna Loa on the Big Island of Hawai‘i erupted
in dramatic fashion, sending fountains of lava hundreds of feet
into the air and down the side of the mountain for miles. The
American missionary Titus Coan climbed Mauna Loa to study the
event and found himself alone and afraid on the great volcano,
aghast at “the awful crater.” Here, Coan discovered the imprint
of a mighty God of creation and destruction. In a prominent
American scientific journal, he reflected, “I seemed to be
standing in the presence and before the burning throne of the
eternal God.” The volcanoes of Hawai‘i represented for Coan the
dynamic contest between salvation and damnation, civilization and
savagery. As such, they became sites of both rigorous scientific
study and deep religious contemplation.<br>
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Biographical: Dr. Tracy Neal Leavelle is Associate Professor and
Chair of the Department of History at Creighton University and a
former Woodrow Wilson Foundation Fellow at Smith College. He has
recently been appointed Director of Digital Humanities Initiatives
at Creighton. His first book is The Catholic Calumet: Colonial
Conversions in French and Indian North America (Penn, 2012).<br>
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Paula Harmon, Administrative Assistant <br>
<div class="moz-signature"><small> School of Cognitive Science <br>
Hampshire College<br>
893 West Street Amherst, MA 01002 <br>
phone: 413.559.5502 <br>
fax: 413.559.5438 <br>
<a href="http://cs.hampshire.edu">http://cs.hampshire.edu</a></small>
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