ARTS on Oceans Distinguished Lecture

Sep 8th, 2015

Janet Harron

ARTS on Oceans Distinguished Lecture

The Faculty of Arts-wide initiative ARTS on Oceans is back on Sept. 9 with a distinguished lecture at 7:30 p.m. in the Bruneau Centre on the Discovery of the Seas: A Case for the Humanities.

The great age of discovery took place in the 15th and 16th centuries when the discovery of routes between oceans shifted human activity from a regional scale towards globalization. The second discovery in the mid-to late 19th century with the increasing cultural and scientific importance of the sea drew new kinds of people to the seashore and out to sea, including writers, middle class families with children, amateur naturalists, artists and tourists.

Dr. Helen Rozwadowski of the University of Connecticut argues that we might be in the midst of a third discovery of the sea, central to which is the rediscovery of the ocean as a profoundly historical place rather than a timeless one. The third discovery involves a growing appreciation of the inextricable relationship between people and oceans that is prompted by the observed and anticipated effect on the ocean of over fishing and global climate change. Articulating this third discovery of the sea reveals a role for the humanities, and particularly for the history of science, in comprehending how knowledge about nature enables its use and indeed its misuse, on a planet where the oceans are central rather than peripheral.

ARTS on Oceans is a Faculty of Arts-wide program, funded by the Vice President Academic’s Fund for Scholarship in the Arts, examining ocean issues through the lens of the social science3 and the humanities. 

All are welcome to this event and parking is available in lot 15B.

Dr. Rozwadowski will also be speaking on The Blue Frontier: Science and Global Enclosure of the Ocean after World War II on Thursday September 10 at 12 noon in SN 2000.  All are welcome to attend.