Above the Oxbow: Engaging the Past on Mount Holyoke : College of Humanities & Fine Arts : UMass Amherst

A sepia archival photo shows Victorian travelers on a rocky hillside by the wooden Summit House. About fifteen people in period dress—long skirts, bonnets, and suits—sit or stand near a railed deck. A small white dog sits among them. To the right, the hill drops away to a panoramic view of a winding river valley, where plumes of steam rise from the distant banks under a pale sky. The scene captures a moment of 19th-century mountain tourism.

Join us to hear Danielle Raad discuss her new book, Above the Oxbow: Stories Entangled with a Mountain.

The book explores the intertwined narratives that surround Mount Holyoke, the locally cherished mountain in a Massachusetts state park with sweeping views of the Connecticut River Valley below and a two-hundred-year-old Summit House perched on top.

Blending ethnographic and historical approaches, it is a public history that illuminates how communities interpret, preserve, and engage with Mount Holyoke’s past and form attachments to place on the mountain.

In person and On campus event posted in Academics

Above the Oxbow: Engaging the Past on Mount Holyoke

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Herter Hall