Earthquake Research at the University of Memphis

The latest issue of Science in Context, a scholarly journal published by Cambridge University Press, is devoted to histories of earthquake science and response. One of the articles in the issue, “Accounts of the New Madrid Earthquakes: Personal Narratives across Two Centuries of North American Seismology,” by Conevery Bolton Valencius, discusses the founding and scholarly output of the Center for Earthquake Research and Information (CERI), which was created in 1977 at the University of Memphis. Much of the center’s research has relied on historical narratives. CERI is currently finishing a decade-long project of compiling a complete set of newspaper accounts of the 1811–12 New Madrid earthquakes, which, among other things, created Reelfoot Lake in northwestern Tennessee. The project, known as the New Madrid Compendium, is being led by Kent Moran.

Conevery Bolton Valencius is a professor of history at the University of Massachusetts Boston. Her article, which was published in 2012, appears in volume 25, number 1, of Science in Context.