Colloquia

Health Geographies of the Overlooked: Race, Data, and Disability

Anonymous — Tue, 29 Oct 2024 19:27:48 +0000

Health Geographies of the Overlooked: Race, Data, and Disability Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 10/29/2024 - 13:27

Dr. Aída Guhlincozzi
Assistant Professor of Geography
University of Missouri

Abstract:

This presentation covers the recent work in health geography focused on vulnerable populations by Dr. Aída Guhlincozzi and colleagues. Specifically, this will cover the ongoing movement of the field in a direction of better encapsulating the needs of communities and populations previously overlooked and underserved by U.S. healthcare systems. This talk includes recently published results on Latina women’s healthcare access, discussions of race and ethnicity in the Latine community, and critical disability geography work regarding Autism and healthcare access. A key intervention recommended includes a brief discussion of the value of community geographic theoretical frameworks and methods.

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Before You Are Here, and other critical cartographic interventions

Anonymous — Mon, 21 Oct 2024 17:19:17 +0000

Before You Are Here, and other critical cartographic interventions Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 10/21/2024 - 11:19

Dr. Clancy Wilcott
Assistant Professor
University of California, Berkeley

Abstract:

This talk discusses a series of critical cartographic interventions undertaken in collaboration between local Indigenous, activist and community groups, and studio.geo?, a cartographic research and teaching studio based at UC Berkeley. It centers on Before You Are Here, one of a series of ongoing collaborative research projects making maps with the Sogorea Te’ Land Trust (STLT) an Indigenous, Urban, Women-Led organization seeking to rematriate the land in East Bay, California. This series of works reimagines cartography, a historically colonial tool of territorialization, for telling stories of Indigeneity, sovereignty and multiplicity in Sogorea Te’s view of the Ohlone Bay Area. Together, we asked: what would it mean to decolonise at the level of the fundamentals of cartography itself and produce a map that depicts a cosmography, rather than a cartography, a living world rather than abstracted data, a map that wrenches open notions of universality and standardization to represent the landscape of the Bay as a series of seasonal space-times through which communities of people live and move, a space uncomputable rather than a fixed fact: an “Indigenous depth of place” (Pierce and Louis, 2007)?

Speaker Bio:

Clancy Wilmott (PhD) is Assistant Professor of Critical Cartography, Geovisualization and Design in the Department of Geography and the Berkeley Center for New Media at the University of California, Berkeley. Her work focuses on intricacies of power inherent in spatial representations, including mapping, cartography and GIS from an anti-colonial perspective.

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Indigenous geographies, law, and the Piikani Water rights case

Anonymous — Mon, 14 Oct 2024 17:16:43 +0000

Indigenous geographies, law, and the Piikani Water rights case Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 10/14/2024 - 11:16

Dr. Michael Fabris
Blackfoot Scholar
Assistant Professor
University of British Columbia

Abstract:

In this presentation, I analyze the Piikani Nation’s attempts to halt the construction of the Oldman River Dam, as this struggle highlights the challenges Indigenous communities can face in attempting to assert our own forms of jurisdiction within the confines of Canadian law. Completed in 1991, the Dam faced multiple forms of opposition by Piikani members, including lawsuits, interventions within the Federal Environmental Review Process, and an attempt by community activists to divert the river around an existing irrigation weir. For this presentation, I focus on the Piikani water rights case, wherein the Piikani Nation attempted to creatively draw from the US Winters Doctrine as a means to establish a legal claim to the Oldman River rooted in treaty rights.

This presentation draws from my current research on Piikani/Blackfoot water relationships, which seeks to answer: how are Indigenous forms of jurisdiction enacted within and beyond reserve boundaries? And how do they articulate with Canadian legal systems, such as the reserve and band council systems? To answer these questions, I draw from both critical political economy and Indigenous legal scholarship, as I argue that in struggles against the capitalist reterritorialization of Indigenous places, it is through the assertions of competing legal jurisdictions that these struggles tend to find their most profound expression. Here, I draw from, and extend, the Marxian concept of articulation, suggesting this concept might be a generative reframing ‘legal pluralism’ frameworks that are often used by scholars to examine how Indigenous legal orders interact with settler law.

Bio:

Michael Fabris (he/they) is a Blackfoot scholar and Assistant Professor in the UBC Department of Geography. His current research focuses on Piikani challenges to the construction of the Oldman River Dam, Piikani water rights, and articulations between Indigenous and settler forms of law.

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Tibetan Pastoralists as Analytical Agents: Epistemic Diversity, Documentary Filmmaking, and Collaborative Theorization

Anonymous — Fri, 08 Mar 2024 16:25:44 +0000

Tibetan Pastoralists as Analytical Agents: Epistemic Diversity, Documentary Filmmaking, and Collaborative Theorization Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 03/08/2024 - 09:25

Huatsen Gyal
Assistant Professor
Anthropology Department
Rice University

Abstract

Drawing on a group of Tibetan pastoralists’ efforts to make environmental documentary films as a means of creating alternative narratives of their relationship to their ancestral land, this talk details how documentary films produced by Tibetan pastoralists subtly challenge the power/knowledge structures and discourses through which they have been framed and known. The aim of this talk is to present how documentary filmmaking can serve as sites of theoretical production, decolonizing learning, and as well as community restoration efforts by blurring the conventional boundaries between theory vs. practice, analysts vs. informants, text-based scholarship vs. multimodal forms of knowledge production. In doing so, the talk crafts a larger argument about how ethnographic attention to different modes of knowledge production may offer us opportunities to participate in a process of collaborative theorization, where our interlocutors are not just information providers, but also analytical agents, knowledge producers, or image-makers alongside us.

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“We are the twins of Komodo dragons”: Multispecies Kinship and Indigenous Spatial Politics in Indonesia’s Ecotourism Frontiers

Anonymous — Fri, 01 Mar 2024 16:15:35 +0000

“We are the twins of Komodo dragons”: Multispecies Kinship and Indigenous Spatial Politics in Indonesia’s Ecotourism Frontiers Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 03/01/2024 - 09:15

Dr. Cypri Jehan Paju Dale
Research Fellow
University of Wisconsin Madison

Abstract

In Komodo National Park, the natural habitat of world’s largest living lizard known as Komodo dragon (Varanus komodoensis) and the indigenous people of Ata Modo, a zoning system has been instrumental in the process of commodification of the dragon and the transformation of its habitat into an ecotourism frontier. This talk draws upon an ethnographic and historical analysis of the two large scale ecotourism projects administered by The Nature Conservancy (TNC) and the Indonesian government in the park in the last 30 years: first, to analyze the mobilization of a zoning system as a tool of control over the protected area and its inhabitants in order to ease the capitalist expansion to the indigenous and multispecies territory and second, to elucidate the articulation of Indigenous spatial politics that relies on the revitalization of multispecies kinship relationship with the Komodo dragons to contest the exclusionary nature of the new tourism industry. While the zoning system—and indeed the whole logic of conservation and ecotourism— is based on the modernist separation and hierarchy between human and nature, indigenous spatial politics relies on the intimate relationship with the dragon, perceived in the indigenous cosmology as twins of the human that were born from the same mother and share the same living space on the islands. The presentation wishes to contribute to the conversation on the political ecology of ecotourism by highlighting ecotourism both as a discourse and policy regime that merge conservation and economic development and its entanglement with spatial politics as a process of negotiating social and environmental relationships in the increasingly disruptive capitalist world.

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Insurgent Cartographies

Anonymous — Mon, 19 Feb 2024 19:23:03 +0000

Insurgent Cartographies Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 02/19/2024 - 12:23

Isaac Rivera
Chancellor's Postdoctoral Fellow
Department of Geography
��Ƶ Boulder

Abstract

Insurgent cartographies are an expression of knowing the world from the standpoint of place. This talk delves into the concept of insurgency and its expressions as a modality of cartography and cultural memory, exploring the task for enacting anti-colonial pedagogies oriented towards liberatory geographies. This study begins through geo-historical analysis of the making and abolition of Columbus Day as a state holiday in its place of origin in Denver, Colorado, underscoring the coalitional capacities of Indigenous world-making practices that envisioned the undoing of the colonial celebration and its maintenance on geographical imaginaries. Using the (Re)Mapping Native Denver art exhibit as a case study in the making of Native counter-cartographies, a study on Native Denver’s ongoing efforts for institutional accountability, I show the radical possibilities of enacting insurgent cartographies from within the colonial University. I will conclude with a discussion on bridging the geo-humanities and geo-social sciences, acknowledging the necessity of both to realize liberatory futures. The insurgent cartographies enacted in the (Re)Mapping Native Denver art exhibit demonstrate the ongoing ways in which Indigenous movements choose to tell their stories of resistance and resurgence, reorienting geographical information systems (GIS) and the art of geography itself.

Bio

Dr. Rivera is a Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow for Faculty Diversity with the ��Ƶ Geography Department.

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Nature-society interactions and political instability

Anonymous — Fri, 16 Feb 2024 20:16:49 +0000

Nature-society interactions and political instability Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 02/16/2024 - 13:16

Andrew Linke
Department of Geography
Associate Professor
University of Utah

Abstract

Political instability and social conflicts vary geographically and in severity. Intense violence – leading to many civilian casualties – engulfs some regions of the world. Simmering economic instability and political tensions exist in other countries that are conventionally viewed as relatively stable. This research is an investigation of experiences with social instability along this continuum, across continents, and among countries. First, I present novel population level estimates of the global burden of armed conflict; the findings are the result of a novel interdisciplinary collaboration between geographers, epidemiologists, and GIScientists. Second, the focus of our collective research studies the adverse effects of climate change, which have harmed livelihoods among communities worldwide and have often led to volatile political and economic outcomes.

Bio

Andrew is an Associate Professor in the University of Utah Department of Geography. He earned his Geography PhD at ��Ƶ-Boulder in 2013, funded by the National Science Foundation and Social Science Research Council. His research spans topics in political geography, conflict, and human-environment interactions. He previously held a position at the International Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) and in the last year has published in Lancet Planetary Health, Scientific Reports, American Sociological Review, Population and Environment, and other journals.

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Watch the Presentation:

[video:https://vimeo.com/914468100]

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The Long Climate Crisis: Global Political Ecologies of Caste, Race, and Migration

Anonymous — Wed, 24 Jan 2024 17:57:23 +0000

The Long Climate Crisis: Global Political Ecologies of Caste, Race, and Migration Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 01/24/2024 - 10:57

Malini Ranganathan
Associate Professor in the Department of Environment, Development, and Health
School of International Service
Faculty affiliate of the Department of Critical Race, Gender, and Culture Studies
American University in Washington, DC.

Co-sponsored by:

Department of Geography (GEOG)
Center for Asian Studies (CAS)
Institute of Behavioral Science (IBS)

Abstract

This talk argues that to bolster our understanding of the long climate crisis, we turn to the interplay of caste and race, labor migration, and ecological and economic extraction in India and the Indian Ocean World from the late 19th century. It draws on over 15 years of ethnographic and activist research on the contemporary climate, housing, and labor unfreedoms of marginalized castes and classes in Bengaluru, India and connects these with transoceanic archives on indentured labor migration to the colonial plantations of Malaya in the Indian Ocean World. In so doing, it rethinks global climate precarity as forged through configurations of caste, coloniality, and racial capitalism. Finally, it suggests that across anticaste, antiracist, and diasporic narratives lies a commitment to planetary humanism. It is this planetary humanism—an ethic that sutures the concerns of land, labor, and ecology with human freedom—that must reinvigorate scholarship and action on global environmental justice.

Bio

Malini Ranganathan is Associate Professor in the Department of Environment, Development, and Health at the School of International Service and a faculty affiliate of the Department of Critical Race, Gender, and Culture Studies at American University in Washington, DC. A critical geographer by training, her research on India and the U.S. studies land, labor, and environmental politics in cities, as well as intellectual histories of anticaste and abolitionist thought. She is the winner of the American Association of Geographers 2023 Harold M. Rose Award for Antiracist Research and Practice and an ACLS-Mellon Collaborative Humanities Grant. She is co-author of Corruption Plots: Stories, Ethics and Publics of the Late Capitalist City(Cornell Press, 2023) and co-editor of Rethinking Difference in India as Racialization (Routledge, 2022), along with over 20 peer-reviewed articles. She is currently working on two books related to environmental justice.

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Towards Earth Data Science for Everyone (or, how I stopped worrying about developing global models and learned to love the local)

Anonymous — Mon, 27 Nov 2023 19:03:13 +0000

Towards Earth Data Science for Everyone (or, how I stopped worrying about developing global models and learned to love the local) Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 11/27/2023 - 12:03

Elsa Culler
Earth Data Science Instructor
Earthlab and ESIIL
CIRES
University of Colorado Boulder

Abstract
In situ Earth Data are unevenly distributed around the world. How can we then develop tools — resource planning, hazard warnings systems, climate adaptation plans — that benefit people around the world? We’ll start off with an attempt to explore the impacts of wildfire on landslide susceptibility worldwide using the NASA Global Landslide Catalog, a news-article-derived landslide database. In the end, though the data covered a much more diverse set of locations and climates than most landslide catalogs, it was extremely difficult to separate the effects of location from data precision (which was much lower in areas with limited English-language news coverage). We will continue with a different approach: bringing more places into Earth Data Science by bringing more people into Earth Data science. Empowering local communities to complete their own analysis requires developing open-source tools and inclusive curriculum that trains students to access data APIs, make use of next-generation tools like ChatGPT to leapfrog early stages of learning, and present and publish their analysis in culturally-aware, multimodal websites. In the process, we will highlight several examples of moves towards more inclusive Earth Data Science curricula, and how that resulted in meaningful student projects, portfolios, and conversations.

Bio
Elsa Culler is an Earth Data Science educator at Earthlab and the Environmental Data Science Innovation and Inclusion Lab (ESIIL) at ��Ƶ Boulder. She loves introducing students from age 5 to mid-career scientists to ways to expand their creative and scientific capabilities through coding and design. Currently, she teaches and develops curricula for the Earth Analytics — Foundations professional graduate certificate program at ��Ƶ, the ESIIL STARS internship program for students from Tribal Colleges and University, and runs training workshops for participants in ESIIL summits and hackathons. She also organizes and mentors student capstone projects — some related to her research on post-wildfire landslides, including rapid identifications of landslides using SAR data. Other student projects have focused on the effects of oil spills in the North Sea, floodplain connectivity in the St. Vrain watershed, and the movement of objects on the seafloor.

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A People’s Atlas of Nuclear Colorado: Infrastructure, Interface, Art/Policy Intersections

Anonymous — Sat, 28 Oct 2023 00:29:19 +0000

A People’s Atlas of Nuclear Colorado: Infrastructure, Interface, Art/Policy Intersections Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 10/27/2023 - 18:29

Shiloh Krupar
Associate Professor
Culture & Politics Program Core Faculty
Georgetown University

Co-sponsored by the Center for Asian Studies and the Albert Smith Nuclear Age Fund at ��Ƶ Boulder

Abstract

Operating in the tradition of the atlases and counter-maps developed by critical and activist scholars, A People’s Atlas of Nuclear Colorado is a collectively authored digital project documenting and interpreting the sites, issues, policies, and cultures associated with the American nuclear weapons complex as it enters its ninth decade. Co-edited by Sarah Kanouse and Shiloh Krupar with more than 40 contributors to date, the Atlas collects and cross-references many types of knowledge, affective registers, and forms of evidence: maps, photographs, and descriptions of major and minor nuclear sites; issue briefs offering historical and policy contexts; artworks responding to nuclear legacies; and scholarly essays connecting Colorado’s specific atomic histories to broader issues concerning environmental justice, technoscientific practice, the formation of a nuclear citizenry, and the performance and projection of hegemony. In this presentation, Shiloh Krupar discusses their approach to building both the social infrastructures that created and maintain the Atlas and the experimental interface design that resists at the level of form the compartmentalization and black-boxing of military and industrial nuclear discourses. Speaking to the Asian Networks of Nuclearity workshop agenda and to a wide range of disciplines, from Art History to Geography, the presentation will conclude with reflections on Atlas pedagogy and nuclear arts and policy. See Colorado Nuclear Atlas.

Poster Image credit: Shanna Merola, “An Invisible Yet Highly Energetic Form of Light”

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