About FDU Press

Drawing upon the interrelation of culture, agriculture, ecology, and landscape, South Jersey Under the Stars raises questions about a region in flux. Alison Hayes-Conroy, who grew up in the southern New Jersey town of Riverton, presents four essays analyzing farmers of the New Jersey Pine Barrens Reserve who act as agricultural stewards; the relationship between agricultural markets, suburbanization, and other forms of landscape change; the relationship between landscape change and residents’ identification with the built environment; and aspects of regional identity, agriculture, and community as seen in light of festival and ritual promoting seasonal awareness. Hayes-Conroy, along with her identical twin sister, Jessica, who co-authored the book, majored in the Growth and Structure of Cities at the College. The book was Hayes-Conroy’s project while working under the Dorothy Nepper Marshall Fellowship Program. Mary Evelyn Tucker, co-editor of the Harvard Series on Religion and Ecology, writes that the book is “an extraordinary achievement.” Hayes-Conroy is a graduate student in geography at the University of Hawaii.