Author: Adam Zarfos

Posted on

Understanding the Past to Build a Better Future

This week’s lecture from Professor Loren McClenachan was very interesting to hear about and once again displays the never-ending relevance that history has in our modern world. The lecture began with some serious discussion of the changes occurring to ecosystems and specifically coral reefs. This was followed by lighthearted pictures of people in short shorts catching big fish like sharks and groupers. Using four different time periods of these pictures, she was able to discover that the fish were decreasing in size over time. This is truly remarkable to see that you can determine this from these images considering that people were taking just to display their large trophy fish. Between the 1950s and the 2000s we have reduced the biomass of these large trophy fishes by 90%. The statistics were alarming to see and I honestly had no idea that the trophy fish in our waters had gone down in size so much or that it had been anywhere near that drastic and it is incredible that this could all be determined from these old photographs of people enjoying their leisure time. Luckily the population of these Goliath groupers has been on the rise since these fish were put on the “Species of Concern” list by the government. I think this is really interesting to consider in our modern world because so many species have already been destroyed or wiped out because of us and yet we continue to make so many harmful decisions towards our environment.

 

It was also very interesting to hear that people from the fisheries are saying there are so many now that they are becoming a nuisance and that they have never seen this many of these groupers in their lives. This is very surprising to hear and must be a large issue to deal with when trying to maintain the longevity of this species. Especially considering how long data on this topic and other marine life forms have been readily available it becomes clear how important these voices from fishermen could be when they have been fishing for long durations. This is really interesting to consider in relation to our talk last week and how communism was able to span such a large region and be so influential with a massive network of spies and correspondents. It really emphasizes the importance of historical records and how the records can get blurred or limited based on our data collected or based on who is given what information or piecing seemingly unrelated things together.

 

In this lecture we also discussed coral loss over 240 years and established it was around 52% over this time period. However, there was a very large spatial balance to the loss and some specific places had up to 92% loss such as Florida Bay. Professor Loren McClenachan also mentioned how sponges were taken from reefs and used for a multitude of things throughout our human history. Sponges were associated with wealth for a long period of time and she even showed us a song singing about sponge money. This high market value really quickly drove declines and by 1870 the shallow water sponges were “fished out.” It is incredible to see so clearly how big of an impact we can have on an ecosystem and environment if we are unregulated. I think this talk relates beautifully to all of the other talks we have had throughout this semester and clearly exemplifies how relevant the past is in our modern day as these issues still exist and many harmful actions we all commit regularly are unregulated and are permanently impacting the world around us. She mentioned at the end of this lecture how understanding how the world around us has changed will help us in preventing further damage to ecosystems and I think that is truly the main theme of this course: understanding the past to help create a better present day.

Posted on

Noulen’s Affair and the Relevance of History

This last weeks lecture from Professor Heather Streets-Salter was extremely interesting and made me want to know more about this topic and other related topics throughout history dealing with international networks. This specific discussion was about the Noulens Affair in Shangai and how it might have been the start of anti-communism before the Cold War. This was extremely exciting to hear about because it was a topic that I knew very little about but also dealt with topics that are relevant to my studies and interest me.

 

With Joseph Ducroux’s arrest his address book was exposed and it revealed a large network across multiple countries. Upon further investigation into these residences officials found information on payroll, pseudonyms, correspondents, cipher codes, and more. Streets-Salter mentioned this truly was the “jackpot” of evidence and it led to over 200 people getting arrested and hundreds of thousands of copies of communist literature being confiscated. This is incredible to hear about because its something the majority of people haven’t heard about and yet it is so incredibly important and relevant to our modern history and our contemporary society.

 

The Noulens Affair was not only important for its historical significance and broader reach impacting so many people from many different countries, but it also was a metaphor for thinking about empires in the 20th century. Professor Streets-Salter said that territories don’t bind empires but they are connected as territories via transitional and global forces, and therefor can be compiled with people from multiple different countries scaling the globe. I think it is interesting to consider that this is such a well-documented example of communism and empires reaching across countries in large networks of spies, and yet there is very little literature on it that I have seen and there really hasn’t been a discussion of it that I can recall until I attended this lecture.

 

The really fascinating part about this is it truly did change the course of history and yet isn’t well known. This in all likelihood did lead to a large uproar and commentary surrounding all of these arrests and likely heightened the fear of communism from colonial powers. This Noulen’s Affair proved that communism could cross borders and boundaries like an empire and it also proved that it had very powerful backing from influential people. This lecture also really emphasized the importance and relevance of history within this presence of the past lecture series. The Noulen’s Affair is a prime example of this because although it is very important, very little people likely know about it or would even understand the significance of this event without background knowledge about communism or Asia during this time period. It also demonstrates how history is forever expanding and there is always more to learn about our roots and our predecessors. I remember during the post-discussion question and answer section Professor Streets-Salter mentioned that the British government still has many of the original documents and I honestly wonder how many people know about this in Britain in comparison to the United States because I think that would be really interesting to see the difference.

Posted on

Artistic Anatomy Paving the Way

This most recent lecture given by Dr. Carin Berkowitz was extremely interesting in the context of this course and might have been my favorite lecture in this series to date. I think it was the uniqueness of the topic that made it so interesting for me but it is undeniable that the pure beauty of some of these works of art also swayed me to favor this lecture more. It was particularly interesting because it is an area of study that I would never have correlated with artwork necessarily on my own, but I quickly realized this is just my own lack of knowledge making me think that way. Our bodies really are works of art in themselves and it is the slight differences between each and every one of us that makes us all so beautiful.

 

It is clear from this lecture that Sir Charles Bell would’ve agreed with me wholeheartedly that each and every body is unique and beautiful. That is why he took such care to show unnecessary details in locations not even related to the bodily system he was portraying. It is also clear by the many various types of artistic work he did for anatomy including wax models, sketches, paintings and much more. I honestly couldn’t help but be taken aback by how gorgeous some of the artwork was, and because of this I couldn’t help but think about how I might be able to obtain some of these works of art. I definitely don’t have a lot of money to spend on some relic or artifact but I would absolutely love to be able to obtain a digital copy of some of these images if at all possible.

 

Aside from my own personal interest in the beautiful work Charles Bell put out into the world, this topic was extremely interesting in the context of this course for a multitude of reasons. The first being the clear connection his work has to modern medicine. Dr. Berkowitz mentioned how the visual arts are becoming increasingly relevant for major medical schools including large elite schools such as Yale. Another connection is through the representation of humans as one whole species. To clarify, I am referencing the question and answer discussion at the end of the lecture when a discussion about race was brought up. I thought this was a particularly interesting topic because one or two of the anatomical pieces by Bell that Dr. Berkowitz showed us depicted African American’s. During a time where slavery was an institution still in place and many saw African American’s as lesser, this seemed groundbreaking to consider. However, as we learned in the discussion from Dr. Berkowitz, it is hard to tell the significance of this because of how scarce the supplies for anatomical drawings were. During a time where religion was also much more commonplace than in our contemporary age, many people did not want them or their family members being cut open and used for science. This means often the bodies being depicted in Bell’s artwork were simply those who weren’t able to prevent it from happening. Despite this fact, there is no denying that Bell gave each and every person the depiction they rightfully deserved in the afterlife by taking so much time and care to make each drawing and depiction stunning. It is also clear that his work was way ahead of his time and he understood the mechanics of the body extremely well. This clearly implies that these visual conceptions of the body are of paramount importance for the field of medicine and makes it clear why medicine and visual arts should be intertwined as we move forward as humans.

Posted on

“Dicty” and Working Together

This week’s lecture from Professor Suegene Noh was about Genomes and the link between the humanities and sciences of genetics and biology. I haven’t taken a Biology course in a while but was still able to understand the majority of points she brought up just because she did an excellent job breaking down terminology and concepts with very basic explanations. That being said I wasn’t able to understand everything that was said just simply because I did not know what some of the things discussed were. However, it is just truly mindboggling to even consider the type of work she has done and can do with technology nowadays to be able to read such enormous amounts of DNA sequences in such an extraordinary pace.

 

I also thought it was particularly interesting to hear that the majority of research done into “Dicty” had been using the same lab samples for decades. I figured almost every experiment would typically go and retrieve a wild sample for testing and learning this was common practice to just continue new studies and tests using the same sample or strain was surprising. Specifically in dealing with fields like genomics this seemed really counterproductive because each individual sample should have unique variations to study. This made me wonder how many other things show up in tests that are often using the same samples from previous studies and therefor generalizing often about species and organisms.

 

This being said I think research like this is especially important because we have this new and incredible technology at our hands and are now able to learn so much about the DNA sequencing of all organisms. I can see this field expanding rapidly and becoming one of the more sought after and discussed topics in the near future. It is also interesting to consider this in terms of our presence of the past theme. As Professor Noh proved with this study, Dicty work together to form multicellular organisms and this is an obviously recurring theme throughout history and it is especially relevant in our modern age as well. There are countless examples throughout history of people working together to fight for a just cause or just to fight for survival and it is always true that working together is the best way to solve large issues or to simply improve.

 

I think this is really intriguing to consider on a global scale since microscopic organisms such as Dicty really make up so much of our planet. We still have so many species we have yet to discover and it is amazing to learn so much from such small organisms. Again tying this back into the humanities it is almost poetic because we have an absurd amount of humans and therefor-human interactions throughout our lives. Considering this fact in relation to the idea that working together is always the best way to improve our world, it becomes clear that with the correct motivation and the right cause we could do some extremely incredible things if we all worked together.

Posted on

Location Impacting Sexuality

Professor Greta LaFleur’s lecture on the history of sexuality in relation to the environment was really thought-provoking and tied back into many of the previous lectures and discussions we have had throughout this course while also making me think about topics in ways I truly hadn’t ever done before. This particular lecture was really interesting to consider in relation to our current social and political climate because people are still very close-minded about gender and sexuality. Considering in Systema Naturae, Linnaeus taxonomized natural plant species based on their sexual organs visibility, and this theme still remains present in our contemporary age as people often unfairly label people as a certain gender based entirely on their sexual reproductive organs and not based on how they choose to identify. We must keep in mind that Linnaeus was attempting to explain the creation of species as created by god but regardless he was fairly accurate even when viewing his words in our modern age.

 

Dr. LaFleur went into depth explaining the humoral theory’s popularity and how many people thought that our human lives and behaviors were dependent on the environment we were born or lived our lives in. This is something clearly I had noticed people do in our modern age, but it seemed slightly racist to generalize entire groups of people into behavior types when in reality each person has their own behaviors and tendencies. Regardless the popularity of this mindset to this day is undeniable and people still clearly think like this at least to some extent just because of how people are represented in the media and online. For example there were four categories for humans, which were Americanus, Europaeus, Asiaticus, and Afer which were described each in their own specific way. Americanus people were said to behave in obstinate and free ways, while Asiaticus supposedly behaved in severe ways and Afer behaved as women without shame. Although this all seemed to further reinforce this racist line of thinking, it is undeniable how relevant this is to our contemporary age when so many people still view other races and people in similar ways of thinking. It is very interesting to think about this in terms of our natural environment as well and our attempts to sexualize various plants such as the Venus Fly Trap. Although this makes it seem easy to blame Linnaeus for this line of thinking, he was only one of several people labeling things similarly or accordingly to humoral theory.

 

Another relevant and interesting idea to consider in relation to all of this was the idea that people often reproduce and get into relationships during the colder months of the year and then tend to end relationships during the warmer times of the year. This by itself clearly implies that our environment around us greatly impacts our sexuality and behaviors to the point that it impacts our relationships. This led to a discussion how different locations such as Las Vegas, can alter people’s opinions on sexuality for a time being because of the atmosphere. This is really interesting to consider in relation to the humoral theory because although it seems to generalize entire groups of people it is also somewhat grounded in fact that locations impact how we act sexually and how we behave.

Posted on

A Priori, Climate Change and Technology

The last lecture we attended from Colby’s Keith Peterson was very interesting and enlightening in relation to our previous discussions. I hadn’t thought in philosophical terms for a while but I thought many of the things Professor Peterson brought into discussion were directly related to our presence of the past theme. Philosophy in general is a very strong example of this concept and theme because many of the most prominent philosophical thinkers proposed some of the most perplexing philosophical questions hundreds of years ago. Philosophy is also a prime example of the presence of the past theme because it incorporates every aspect of our existence and therefor can be applied to nearly every issue we deal with in our contemporary age.

 

Professor Peterson really honed in on Kantian philosophy and the concept of a priori, which refers to things prior to experience that we use to categorize and understand the world around us. This concept related directly back to previous lectures from this series and the recurring theme of climate change. Again it was discussed that humans are not fully capable of understanding or battling this idea of the climate crisis. Many people cannot even believe the problem despite evidence being right in front of them and this is because the scope of the problem is so massive that we feel little direction about how to deal with it. We have nothing throughout our previous experiences that tell us how to deal with such a gigantic issue and our experiences throughout history have made us feel comfortable that a solution will present itself eventually. This is not the case with such a tremendous and important issue like global climate change and we need to change our mindset and lifestyles in order to combat it.

 

Professor Peterson also discussed prejudice, which is another extremely relevant topic in our contemporary age as emotions are running high and racism still remains in the fore of many cultures. Professor Peterson stated that prejudice is a pre-judgment that is lacking validity because it is often justified from things that happened in the past or things that never even occurred in the first place. It mostly stems from discussions about people that differ from us, which leads to people forming invalid opinions.

 

I think the importance of a priori is clear but I think it is interesting to consider what it means for us in our modern contemporary age where people are spending more time than ever before looking at a screen. How relevant is past knowledge when a majority of it is available at all hours a day at the tip of our fingertips, and how can we measure the importance of each past experience or encounter when there are countless encounters possible through the internet and new technology on scales never before seen? I think when considering this idea in combination with our modern world, it becomes clear that a priori should be impacting people to combat big issues like climate change simply through repeated exposure online. When I was younger I feel like many people still could calmly brush off worries about climate change, but now I feel more and more people recognize the significance of the issue and I think this is a small step but obviously there is still a lot of work to be done.

Posted on

Science and Humanities Collaboration

This lecture from Dr. Wai Chee Dimok was very enlightening and encouraging because it really emphasized the importance or collaboration between the science and humanities. She was able to do this using Elizabeth Bishop and William Blake’s work and it reminded me a lot of our lecture from this series a few weeks ago involving Alice in Wonderland and linking these themes to environmental issues.

 

I think this is a very powerful way to frame these issues and it can help influence more people to be more cautious with their carbon footprint and their overall pollution output. By using science for the more critical proof that these issues are dangerous and serious, and then using literature as the relatable side of it to emphasize how these issues reoccur throughout our human history, we should be able to draw more people to action or to at least make them understand the scope of the situation at hand.

 

In the previous lecture about Alice in Wonderland the global environmental issues were connected to very old literature displaying how people are able to communicate real dangers through alternate realities. I think this relates to this lecture as well because Bishop and Blake represent the two different sides of this coin. The difference is in their thinking about the impact of human actions on global warming, and a lot of this lecture discussed how there isn’t agreement on this from both sides of the topic.

 

One part of this lecture was very new information to me and that was the portion regarding Singer’s “Animal Liberation.” Dr. Wai Chee Dimok pointed out how he believed that eating animals and meat is leading to global warming and I had never heard this idea before. I know all about many other forms of pollution and I know that our carbon emissions from out homes and cars are a very serious problem. I do not know how much people are negatively impacting the environment by eating meat, especially when it is locally sourced and not directly from these larger companies with monopolies on the industry. I personally love eating meat and it makes up a large portion of my diet and although I try to be conscious of where I buy meat and what brand I buy, this definitely made me question how much I was contributing to the overall issue of global warming by so regularly eating this meat.

 

Although this section of the talk was extremely interesting to hear about and research further, I am not sure about its direct relation to the presence of the past theme and especially its relation to connecting the humanities and science. I personally thought a lot of the other points brought up were really strong and I definitely think collaboration between the sciences and humanities is necessary to help society as a whole. However, I don’t know how vegetarianism and eating less meat directly relates to intertwining this disciplines to create a better and more environmentally conscious world. I do think that this discussion was very thought provoking and made people think about all of these issues and more which in itself is effective for helping to create change and more open-minded people.

Posted on

Scientific Deception and Division

In this discussion, we learned more about biological studies involving the human genome. This lecture was interesting to listen to because as an american studies major I have learned about studies of the human genome in the past and have looked at them with a critical eye before this lecture. Keeping that in mind, after this discussion I really feel like the majority of these studies and projects end up trying to state the same claim that we are all more similar to each other than we realize. I think in this lecture we learned that the opposite effect can be achieved through these studies however, because many people wanted to declare or claim their own independence despite any evidence proving similarities in the human genome.

I thought in light of this line of thinking, hearing about the efforts through Indian Genome Variation to unite people through this variation and I feel like that is exactly the initiative that needs to be taken by more people about this topic of research. As the lecture continued we learned from Dr. Mukharji that this effort itself might be repeating the same issues brought up by previous studies throughout history around this topic and might be causing further divergence from unity.

I thought the most startling part of the lecture to me was learning how some of the most famous case studies on this topic have such a small subject pool. I forget which study specifically Dr. Mukharji referenced but it was either Harvard or Princeton and was frequently referenced as one of the more credible studies. Yet this study only had a subject total of slightly over 100 which clearly would never be sufficient to cover statistics on such a large population of people. This is the main issue with these studies and is one that is not simple to fix because there is no easy way to test one million people’s DNA and compare all of their genomes.

I think this is all extremely intriguing to consider in relation to our current political and social climate surrounding facts and the media in general. Most of these studies don’t get much media coverage but some are definitely still included in student textbooks and referenced as if they are solidly grounded by evidence when in reality they don’t represent accurate data for an entire population. Especially considering how often people claim science is concrete and how facts are all we can trust in rely on in our modern age, it is appalling to think that studies such as these can be trusted as fact and taught in schools when they are sending such mixed messages and making us less unified as people. This has me thinking in conjunction with some of my other classes this year involving longer research projects and how I might be able to look into some of these studies throughout history and perhaps see the critical scholarly reactions to them throughout the years and compare that to the reactions we have to them in our contemporary age.

Posted on

Literature and Climate Change

This lecture was very interesting to listen to for me personally because it involves subjects that I am passionate about. By incorporating literature and using famous novels as reference to discuss the dangers of climate change in our contemporary age, Dr. Hensley was able to captivate me in this lecture and make me even more conscious of my carbon footprint. I have always cared about the environment and one of my first jobs was working as a courtesy boat inspector in Belgrade, Maine. I used to make sure invasive species of plants such as milfoil were not on any of the boats entering the lake or leaving the lake and I was to remove and bag all of these invasive plant species. As this indicates I am passionate about taking care of our planet and so many of the statistics that were presented in this lecture were extremely alarming. Everyone has heard all of the terrible things about climate change before, but to hear things like over 50% of the species of animals on this planet might be extinct within our lifetime it is terrifying.

I think by combining this was classical and historic literature and comparing the views culturally 200 years ago to the views people hold now, it was really powerful to think about both how far we have come since then and how little we really have changed. On one hand, we have all of this crazy technology and the super computers of even a few decades ago can now fit into all of our pockets. On the other hand we are still experiencing the same issues as someone like Alice, and must still manage and battle the idea that we may never be able to return to the world we know and love.

I thought the most interesting part of this lecture was the discussion between Dr. Hensley and a student about the power of literature in combating issues like this. Although I personally may not argue that Alice was making a substantial argument about climate change in the world, I think that literature is definitely one of the most powerful tools we have in our modern age. As more and more people buy into the idea of fake news, less people believe major news outlets and more people will go back to believing written word and hard facts. It if difficult for most people to argue with strong statistics and evidence (although some still manage to do so) because they are so often backed up with scientific evidence. When this is written down and communicated effectively to the youth of this country and the world in primary schools, we will be properly preparing the future generations of this world to take care of it. I thought also mentioning the ways books create discussion, collaboration and just facilitate further brainstorming on how to combat this huge issue was really insightful. Overall I thought this presentation was another great addition to this lecture series and kept me entertained and learning throughout.

Posted on

Native American Injustices, Political Figures and Social Media

Professor Sonja Thomas’ presentation was really powerful to listen to and it really opened my eyes to the issues that Native American people deal with throughout the United States. The most impactful part of this talk for me was that I truly had not heard a lot about many of these issues beforehand and I think that is shocking and alarming for multiple reasons. I think that shows that people are really isolated from the struggles of Native Americans and it is not regularly brought up in educational settings or discussions throughout primary school. I think this is alarming in itself but it is also a product of our new modern world and our ability to completely shut out many issues surrounding us and just go about our jobs without considering the impact of major political figures saying these racist and hateful things.

I think in general social media and technology are allowing these hateful things to be said more regularly in our contemporary age. The ability to publicly say or post anything online anonymously through the internet is something that allows people to be more hateful than they might ever be in person. This ability is making people more confident in their ability to do this and get away with it and makes them eventually more likely to say hateful things to people in person.

This of course directly relates to our current president and his language and usage of social media. He utilizes platforms such as Twitter to slander people regularly and has made multiple racist comments publicly on social media and in press conferences.

This was only part of the incredibly stimulating presentation from Professor Thomas, the part that was entirely new information to me and was really saddening to learn more about was the physical and sexual abuse that Native Americans experienced with Catholic schools on the reservation. This was devastating to learn more about especially as I consider also learning that Native Americans have a higher suicide rate. I will never be able to understand the hateful acts people are capable of committing and it is shocking and terrible that these things continue to occur in our modern age.

I think that for me this made me especially critical of the Catholic church because I personally have never been religious and most of my close family is also not religious. My mom was raised Catholic and most of her side of my family is Catholic but I was never very close with them as I was raised in Maine and they lived in Pennsylvania. In general though the few Catholic services I have been to have been very pleasant and have left me feeling good. However, when I hear about injustices such as those presented in this talk, and others such as those displayed in the movie Spotlight, it becomes questionable to me why this church has been able to get away with so many horrid social injustices for so long and yet maintain influence over so many individuals. Perhaps this is a stretch and a bit too critical, but this is definitely where my mind is drawn after learning so much from Professor Sonja Thomas.