| Abstract Detail
Botanical History Sundberg, Marshall [1]. Barton’s College Botany at the University of Pennsylvania, 1805. During the spring semester, 1805, William Darlington was an undergraduate student in Professor Benjamin Smith Barton’s Botany course at the University of Pennsylvania. Darlington, who completed his M.D. that semester, continued to botanize in the Philadelphia area for the rest of his life. His professor, Dr. Barton, was now in his 15th year as Professor of Natural History and Botany at the College of Philadelphia/University of Pennsylvania, and had recently published (1803, 1804) the first botany textbook in the United States. In this presentation I will describe the course content and pedagogies employed by Barton, based primarily on Darlington’s class notebook, supplemented by fragments of Barton’s lecture notes, his textbook, other publications, and comments by his fellow botanists, John and William Bartram of Bartram’s Garden, a common field-trip destination for the course. Words used by critics to describe Barton’s text, “much ingenious speculation and curious learning intermixed” and “though diffuse in style, is full of entertaining anecdotes” seem also to be an apt description of his lectures.
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1 - Emporia State University, Department Of Biological Sciences, 1 Kellogg Circle, Emporia, KS, 66801, United States
Keywords:
botanical education
18th Century U.S.
Benjamin Smith Barton.
Presentation Type: Oral Paper
Session: 33, Botanical History
Location: 104/Mayo Civic Center
Date: Tuesday, July 24th, 2018
Time: 3:45 PM
Number: 33BH002
Abstract ID:924
Candidate for Awards:None |
