Informal Talks to Non-Academic Audiences

For a number of years, Cooper Society founder and Secretary/Treasurer Hugh C. MacDougall gave talks on James Fenimore Cooper and his writings to varied non-academic audiences in the Cooperstown area. A selection is available here.

We welcome submissions of other talks on Cooper prepared for non-academic audiences.

The papers are archived here by year.

• (1990) James Fenimore Cooper: Prophet of the Environmental Movement. Cooper, many decades ahead of his time, proclaimed the major principles of modern environmentalism.
• (1997) James Fenimore Cooper and the Sea. Cooper as novelist of the sea, naval historian, and friend of the United States Navy.
• (1998) Making a Place Historic: The Coopers and Cooperstown. How three generations of Coopers gave their differing visions of Cooperstown to the world.
• (2000) The Book that Made Glens Falls Famous: An Introduction to James Fenimore Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans. Born in the Cave at Glens Falls in 1824, Mohicans considers seriously the role of the wilderness in creating the American character, the American Indian, and the African-American.