Author: easogu21

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Consequences of Over Capitalized Markets

Professor Loren McClenachan’s lecture, “Historical Marine Ecology: Informing the Future by Learning from the Past,” was one of my favorite lectures this semester. I don’t know much about historical marine ecology, but Professor McClenachan was able to make this topic relevant to me. Professor McClenachan is a marine ecologist that looks at the historical changes of marine animal populations, more specifically in the Florida Keys.

She began the lecture by showing us pictures of two different environments and asked us if we could tell which has been degraded. Typically, when you think of environmental destruction it is pretty obvious and the effects are made easy to spot. But in one of her examples both of the pictures looked fine, you would only be able to spot which environment has been bothered by looking beyond the surface. The idea of looking beyond the surface resonated with me because often times, people won’t believe about the hazardous effects we have on the environment because they don’t see the effects directly. In order to truly understand and start making progress in the fight against climate change and environmental degradation, we need to go beyond our normal and start acknowledging the subtle destruction we are causing to our planet.

In the lecture Professor Loren McClenachan sums up what I was saying previously with the term, shifting baselines syndrome. What this means is that people assume that the state of the environment at the start of the careers is “natural” and all change afterward is “unnatural”. This complete disregard of historical changes is extremely dangerous because without understand our position in relations to the past, we will continue destroying our environment to the point of no return. Professor McClenachan stated that we are living in a 10% world. What this means is that there has been such a decline in the ecology on earth over the years and we are living in the remnants. The thought of that is scary to me because before this I too considered the world we live in now as “normal”.

Professor McClenachan research looked at the historical ecology of the Florida Keyes and specifically analyzed the changes in large trophy fish, coral reefs, and sponges. What she found was that for large trophy fish, using pictures from the 1950s, there has been a 90% decline in the size of large trophy fish. For coral reefs, she found a 52% loss over 240 years and the estimates for coral change with a focus on areas of extant coral are around 80% (which is a severe underestimate). Lastly, for sponges, she found that there has been a huge decline in sponge populations due to the fact that it is part of an over-capitalized boom and bust export fisheries market.

During the question and answers portion of the lecture, someone asked whether or not there has been effort to get previous fishing photos out to the public, to inform communities about the impact trophy fishing has on the environment. Professor McClenachan response by saying that there were but different places have different openness to hearing about the damage fishing has, and that many don’t want to hear the story. This ambivalence to hearing about how we are systematically destroying our environment is the reason why we need to continue reflecting on how our actions have consequences, whether it be from the past or present.

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How History Connects

Professor Heather Streets-Salter from Northeastern University lecture, “The Chill Before the Cold War: The Roots of Anti-Communism in the Interwar Period” was a very great lecture because she explained a technical historical story that typically would require a lot of context in a way that someone like me without the historical background could understand.

Professor Heather Streets-Salter started off the lecture by introducing it with another title called the Noulens Affair Story. This was a story about Joseph Ducroux a spy that was arrested and was caught with an address book that exposed himself and his network all across the region. When officials investigated each of the locations found in the address book, they found information on payroll, list of pseudonyms, correspondents, and cipher codes which incriminated many people in the network. This discovery led to the arrest of 276 individuals and the confiscation of 963,601 copies of communist literature. Upon further digging, officials were able to discover links between Moscow and Shanghai and Shanghai and Southeast Asia via Hong Kong, along with connections between Java and India via Burma and Thailand.

The lecturer explained that this story was so significant because the Noulens Affair was a metaphor for thinking about empire in the 20th century. She said that Empires were not as firmly bounded territories mainly in communication with the metropole, but as connected territories connected to one another via transitional and global forces. Another reason why this story is so important that I found interesting, was that it sparked so many Pan- movements. According to Professor Heather Streets-Salter, the Noulens Affair made it so that colonial peoples connected to one another and extra colonial people via diasporic movements, like pan-Islam, pan-Asianism, and communism for example.

Pan-Islamic and pan-Asian ideas were highly influential intellectual and political forces during the time leading up to the Noulens Affair. This was non-Western elites’ contribution to the end of European hegemony in Asia. By rebelling against the West these thinkers were shaping and legitimizing their own self-identity. Pan-Islam and pan-Asianism helped to articulate non-Western discourse on civilization, modernity, and internationalism on a global public sphere. The politics of these new civilization identities functioned in relation to rising nationalist movements and changing power relations between Europe and Asia.

Professor Heather Streets-Salter concluded her lecture by arguing that the Noulens Affair Story is an extremely useful case study for exploring transnational and global connections and the violent world of international communism and anti-communism in this period. This story forces us to read in between the lines and connected seemingly unrelated stories together to piece together much greater phenomena occurring around us.

During the questions and answers part of the discussion, someone asked if the prejudice in the colonial era influence the prejudice of the Cold War. Professor Streets-Salter’s answered this by saying that ideas of race leave powerful legacies. She explained that ideas do not die but become entangled in policy and become implicit. The prejudices in the colonial era instead of going away became institutionalized and left lasting marks on the Cold War era.

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Realism in Art and Anatomy

Professor Carin Berkowitz lecture, “Anatomists and the Stolen Statues: Stories of Science, Art, and Religion” provided me with interesting insights into how all of these fields intertwine. I personally never would’ve thought about how interconnected the field of Anatomy and Art were until after this lecture. Using the research and practices of Charles Bell a renowned Anatomist in the early 1800s, Professor Carin Berkowitz explored the fundamental relationship between Art and Science. She also argues that that same relationship has transcended time and is still present in both fields till this day and will remain present in the future of both fields as well.

Charles Bell was a teacher of anatomy before formal medical education became an official practice. His work primarily focused on displaying the body through visual displays. These visual displays include dissections, wax models, preservations, watercolors, and sketches. One of Charles Bell’s philosophy of learning was that the hand was an extension of the eye. Through that process, we can express our internal will through creation. That is why many of Bell’s sketches were extremely detailed and human-like. Instead of just drawing broken up body parts, Bell’s illustrations included the faces of the subject and the even the linens covering their body. For the rest of my reflection, I will be exploring Bell’s affinity for realism and how Bell’s contributions still permeate through society today.

Using the work of Bazin, “The Ontology of the Photographic Image,” I better understand why Charles Bell depicted his illustrations in such a way. According to Bazin, paintings are more eternal than photographs but are limited. Photography allowed artists to embalm time and produce an image that is a reality of nature. Although Bell’s work happened way before the realism movement, I would like to say there was a trend in depicting things as they were in real life and that inspired Bell to do his drawings with such human-like characteristics.

During the questions and answers part of the discussion, an audience member asked Professor Carin Berkowitz about the range of particularity and individuality in Bell’s work and the role of race and sex in the way Bell represented individuality. The lecturer response was that it was rare to see Black men in depictions because many were just body parts. She also added that some people argued that assigning race to anatomical structures was controversial because it should just be representative. Lastly, she said that for a body to take place in the classroom, the victim must not have been able to afford to protect their remains. That last point resonated with me because it just calls to question the ethics of Bell’s work. The corpses he used may have contributed to a large body of research but if the bodies were obtained using unethical practices why is his work so highly celebrated. I also wondered if that was why Bell was so focused on depicting them so realistic as if it was his way of giving the stolen corpses the human dignity they deserved.

Bell’s work in teaching anatomy through artful visual depictions was a very effective way of teaching in the early 19th century. That same utilization of art and visual models are still being used in medicine today through the use of simulations and computer modeling. Anatomy would not be what it is today without the use of visual aids and Charles Bell is in part to thank for that.

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From Conflict to Evolution

Professor Suegene Noh’s lecture on “How Current Genomes are Shaped by Evolutionary Past” explored how the lives of microorganisms are impacted by their social interactions both of the same and differing species. These interactions often result in the evolution of cells and genes. Professor Suegene Noh focused primarily on the social amoeba and its microbial symbiont as an example for this lecture.

Personally, beyond my single course in Microorganisms and Society, this talk presented a lot of information that I was not very familiar with. It was heavily technical and included a lot of jargon which made it difficult for me to truly understand the concept. But Professor Suegene Noh did a great job of breaking some concepts down. She started the lecture off with this idea of the Central Dogma. The Central Dogma of molecular biology describes the two-step process, transcription and translation, by which the information in genes flows into proteins. DNA first goes through transcription. Transcription is the synthesis of an RNA copy of a segment of DNA. After that, the DNA is converted into RNA which is then translated into a protein. The Central Dogma provides the basic framework for how genetic information flows from a DNA sequence to a protein production inside cells. Using this framework, Professor Suegene Noh was able to use next-generation sequencing to read millions of DNA sequences on specialized instruments to analyze her dicty strains. During her experiment she found that competitive interactions among amoebas have caused certain genes to evolve more rapidly and how associating with an amoeba host may have caused symbiont genomes to shrink in size.

Relating this concept of conflict and evolution back to the theme of this series: Presence of the Past, we can see how this manifest on a much larger scale. Throughout time, humans have gone through countless conflicts and have thus evolved from it. Examples of this include the evolution of sciences. Before when we were plagued with diseases and sickness, there were no remedies, but we as a society evolved and created things like modern medicine and vaccines. Conflict forces life to either adapt and grow or to fall back and die. But our society today, wouldn’t be where it is if it was not for people using conflict and competition and creating something new and start changing. Biologically see can easily see how our cells and DNA have changed from the prehistoric times but looking more sociologically and historically we can see how our civilization has been built on social conflict and how we have evolved because of it.

During the questions and answers portion of the discussion, someone in the audience as a question about why Professor Noh used dicty from the wild as opposed from dicty grown in a lab. Her response was that there are only three lab strains and because of that, the work from that would not be applicable to that of the real world. She also wanted to find a natural response and natural variation. I enjoyed her response because we can easily translate this to a social scale and explore how facilitated conflict as opposed to natural conflict breed different results.

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Sexual Politics of Racial Difference

Professor Greta LaFleur’s lecture, “Toward an Environmental Theory of Early Sexuality” was very enlightening because it explores the history of sex and how the meaning of it has changed throughout history and how it relates to the environment.

Towards the beginning of Professor LaFleur’s lecture, she explains and breaks down Linnaeus’ Systema Naturae. This book is one of the major works written by Carl Linnaeus and in the book, he attempts to describe and understand the natural world as a reflection of the logic of God’s creation. His sexual system, where species with the same number of stamens were treated in the same group. For humans, this is broken up into four categories: Americanus, Europaues, Asiaticus, and Afer. Each of these having their own personality type to match their physical description. Americanus is described as reddish, choleric, erect and behaves obstinate, merry, free. Europaues is described as white, sanguine, muscular and behaves gentle, acute, inventive. Asiaticus is described as sallow, melancholy, stiff and behaves severe, haughty, avaricious. Lastly Afer is described as Black, phlegmatic, relaxed and behaves like women without shame. I found these descriptions very easy because these ideas still persist to this day.  In our culture, today white women are seen as these gentle beings full of purity and in need of protection. While on the other hand Black women are seen as sexual objects that act, who behave in ways that are portrayed as provocative.  This ideology is very apparent in media when analyzing the different portrayal of Black and white women in cinema. It is interesting to me how Greta LaFleur explores how these stereotypes began so long ago but are still upheld even till this day.  She even explains the sexual politics of racial difference and why one group is shamed for their sensuality.

During Professor Greta LaFleur’s lecture, she also explains some work done on sexual theory. The first being Humoral Theory which understood the human form as a “porous envelope” that was deeply vulnerable. The second theory being Climate Theory, which is the idea that particular bodily arrangements and types, particular characters, and particular qualities were endemic to (and perhaps produced by) the relative hear or cool of different regions. She goes more in depth with the second theory and gives examples of the phenomenon in a modern context. The first example was cuffing season, which is when people get in relationships during the colder months and then break up during the hotter months. The second example was the Geography of Questionably Sexual Decisions which basically states that in a different place people vary in the sexual choices they make.  I found both of these concepts really interesting because it connects how some of our sexual decisions are products of the environment around us.

During the questions and answers portion of the discussion, someone in the audience asked if Professor LaFleur could expand on how the environment and things like macrogeographic could have a certain effect on people. She explained how things like architecture or state location could alter the way citizens view sex and sexuality. I found this to be really interesting. For the most part, I believe it because phrases like “What happens in Vegas, stay in Vegas exists”, but I’m curious as to the extent of influence the environment has.

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A Priori and the Environment

Professor Keith Peterson’s lecture, “The Past that has never been Present: The Changing Role of the a Priori in Philosophical Anthropology was very educational for me. I have never taken a philosophy class before, so the term a Priori was new to me. In the lecture, Professor Keith Peterson explained the term as ‘prior to experience”. Throughout the lecture, he gives examples of common a priori experiences. The first he gives is one found in what we call prejudice. The term prejudice is a pre-judgment, but it has no cognitive status and it is lacking in “objective validity”. But then he shifted and explained how we can use a priori to better understand environmentalism and the environmental debate.

I connected Professor Keith’s lecture to two previous lecture we had that related climate change with literature and the humanities. In this lecture, Professor Peterson referenced William Rees’s work which explored topics like genetic determinism. Peterson explained that that is when knowledge of increased risk or even imminent crisis is rarely sufficient to induce either individual behavioral change or societal transformation. This recurring idea of literature being able to fill some gaps in the conversation or provide parallels to current beliefs about environmentalism has been explored by Wai Chee Dimock and Nathan K. Hensley. Both believe that the answer to climate change awareness requires the collaboration of both the sciences and the humanities.

However, in Professor Keith Peterson’s lecture he believes that instead of answering questions about environmentalism, philosophical literature can provide insight into people’s resistance to accepting scientific evidence on climate change. Going back to this idea of the a priori, Peterson explained that many people are so apathetic to climate change ideas because this a priori cognition is very difficult to overcome. A priori is the knowledge that comes from prior experience and because many have not had first-hand experience with the negative effects of climate change, it makes it hard for them to rise up and do something about it.

During the question and answers part of the lecture, someone in the audience asked, “Who is at the table changing the mind of climate change conversations?” Professor Keith Peterson’s response was that everyone must be there and that if we want the thing to change, we have to envision a world that moves behind the status quo and challenges our current ideals. I was really intrigued by his response because as it stands now many are very ambivalent to the urgency or climate change. The following question was that, “Do we need a personal encounter with climate change to fully understand and want to work against it because we don’t include to cognitively think of climate change in the macro level? His response to this question was that Education has to do with transmitting some amount of information but that may not be the best way for us to learn things. Since we live in manufactured habitats, we need to get out and experience nature. I really liked this answer because I found myself wondering what a first-hand encounter with climate change would really look like because its effects don’t really present themselves at the micro level. But in order for real change to be made, we as a society need to push behind what is comfortable and strive to explore beyond what we currently know. By doing this we will be better positioned to make progress in addressing climate change.

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Combatting Weak Environmentalism

I found Dr. Wai Chee Dimok’s lecture very intriguing. Using literature, she was able to explore some ideas of climate change. Using Elizabeth Bishop and William Blake’s work, she was able to give insightful examples of how science and humanities come together.

She started her presentation by giving us the term “weak environmentalism”.  She described this as, “to desolate a sense of foreboding, an oblique or incidental relation. Environmentalism by porous not concentration of purpose.” When I heard this, I connected it back to Nathan K. Hensley’s lecture on Action After Nature: Climate Crisis and the Force of Literature. Both of these lectures explain how literature is a medium to present ideas on climate change.

Dr. Wai Chee Dimok referenced Peter Singer’s, “Animal Liberation” in her lecture and explained how he believed that eating meat is the worst kind of human speciesism and was a proponent for giving animals more rights. She then followed his text up with an article by the Scientific American Journal: “How Meat Contributes to Global Warming”. I was not sure how this related back to Blake and Bishops work though. However, I connected it back to her idea of weak environmentalism. To me, weak environmentalism is when climate change activism attacks individuals as opposed to the bigger forces at play. The Scientific Journal’s article basically blames climate change on poor people for not being vegan instead of the 100 biggest companies causing 70% of global gas emission that is messing up the climate. In the previous lecture, Hensley said that awareness in literature manifest itself as tangible action when people rewire their brains from an individual level to more collective thinking in order to create real change.

Going back to Blake and Bishops work, Dr. Wai Chee Dimok argues that they represent two different realities and positions on climate change. The “Sandpiper” conveys more of an urgency to modern problems like ocean acidification and a decrease in the food supply. While “Auguries of Innocence” has more of a leaning against animal abuse and research done explaining the devastating effects, animal abuse has on the environment.

During the question and answer part of the discussion, one of the professors asked Dr. Wai Chee Dimok about the difference between scientific thinking (orientated by end result) and literacy thinking and how do we make sense of that? Dr. Wai’s response to that was that we need a mixture of both. Science and humanities need to come together and co-educate each other. Science needs to provide the objective, tested, and stated facts. While the humanities need to articulate this information into feelings that invoke emotions and meaning.

After reflecting on Dr. Hensley’s lecture and adding it to my understanding of Dr. Wai’s lecture I believe that the answer to climate change awareness requires the collaboration of both the sciences and the humanities. We may not be able to solve climate change with this alone, but this lecture helped me see that by bridging these two concepts together we can position ourselves on a path where we are better able to combat this environmental crisis.

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Racism in the Name of Science

Projit Bihari Mukharji’s lecture on “Collecting Bodies, Bodily Collectives” explores how in India genetic research has been done to create a caste system between different socioeconomic groups. Countless studies have been done to disprove the idea of a single human genome and propagate a narrative of “unity in diversity”. In this lecture, Projit Mukharji touched on the Indian Genome Variation Initiative and their research concerning pools of genomic difference within India. The history of genome collection though is extremely controversial and included deception and theft. Dr. Mukharji provides us with some stories of scientists lying to patients, claiming to be treating them while just using them for their blood. Or scientists going into sacred graveyards and stealing corpses in the name of research. These methods are beyond unethical and made me want to look more into the history of unethical medical/ research practices done here in the United States.

Probably one of the most popularized examples of unethical medical malpractice is the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. The study involved around 600 black men; 399 with syphilis and 201 who did not have the disease. Researchers advertised the experiments as a “Free Blood Test; Free Treatment”, where the patients were promised free meals, free physicals, and free burial insurance. However, the real study was the “Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male.” The men never told they had syphilis and were never given treatment for it but were just examined until they were killed by the disease. There are also examples of drugs like BiDil, which is a drug targeted at African Americans with heart failure. Anatomically Black people have the same hearts as white people, but this drug is an example of how science is a tool to reinforce racism. The United States has a history of using Black Americans as the guinea pigs for their science experiments and though they claim the findings they gain from these unethical measures are worth it, I have to disagree. White people have constructed this idea of race and have since been using it to assert their superiority in the world and science is just one of the many tools used to do it.

After leaving this lecture, I was anxious because, with the expanding world of scientific innovation especially in biometrics, we as a population could be in danger due to the sinister history genomic science has when it comes to race.  With the growing collections of DNA by means of harmless activities of trying to trace your ancestry through things like 23 and me or Ancestry.com, I feel like many communities of color may be placed in compromising positions in the name of science.

During the questions and answers part of the discussion, one of the professors in the audiences asked about the examination of patients and the history of uninformed consent in the past and how that affects modern science. This question resonated with me because there are so many examples of research gained through nefarious practices and if it should still be used to this day. Dr. Mukharji’s response was that people should be aware of the history of medical practices but focus on doing something good with it. I understand this frame of thinking because the damage has been already been done so might as well let some good come from it. But there is still the need to learn and verify these findings that many accept without question.

 

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Literature’s Response to Climate Change

Nathan K. Hensley’s lecture on Action After Nature: Climate Crisis and the Force of Literature was very eye-opening for me. He touched on the topic of Climate Change with a perspective I have never heard before. During the presentation, he brought up the idea of environmental racism which I will focus my reflection on.

Environmental injustices are more likely to occur in rural and low-income neighborhoods where citizens are not only not provided with the equality infrastructure to help protect against environmental inequality but are often also limited to their access to health care which exacerbates the side effects of the injustice.

In the lecture, Hensley uses the example of Fresno, California. This area consistently ranks among the most polluted for two types of air pollutants- ozone in the summer and particulates in the fall and winter. The air can be a swirl of soot from residential wood burning, smoke from wildfires, diesel exhaust from trucks and aerosol particles from dairies. Because of this air pollution, about 200,000 adults have been diagnosed with asthma and about 75,000 children have asthma. When looking at the statistics, a higher proportion of kids from an African American background have been diagnosed with asthma. The disproportionate rates of frequent asthma symptoms among Black children indicate major health disparities that require a response by local communities.

Environmental pollution and climate change are disproportionality damaging the health of Black and low-income communities. Bringing this back to the lecture, Dr. Hensley’s main point was about the power of literature and how they are very relevant to Climate Collapse. Books like In the Wake: On Blackness and Being which allows us to make trans temporal connections to history and modern society. Books like this help create a framework for environmental change and movements. Literature fosters mutual, collaborative thinking that ultimately builds collectives of people passionate about making the world a better place.

He also focused heavily on the story of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. The story is a tale of two mutually exclusive orders of representation. One a releases world of Alice above world life. Another filled with unusually animated queer scenes that are ruled by violence. Hensley also notes how in the book there is a movement between two order of expectations and that manifests itself with nonverbal graphic marks because it cannot be captured grammatically. Hensley point in referencing this book is that since the piece was written during a transition from a rural and agricultural world to one focused on industrialization, we can mirror Alice’s dichotomy with that of real life.

During the question and answer part of the discussion, a student asked how this awareness literature creates manifests itself as tangible action. I as well had this question because it is very easy to make general and big assumptions with solutions that will work in a perfect utopian society. He answered the question by explaining how we should rewire our brains from an individual to more collective thinking. At first, this explanation didn’t make sense to me but as he elaborated, I resonated more with this idea. Often when talking about climate change, I’ve heard many people shame others for not being vegan or for using straws and equating their individual choices to the cause of global warming. But if we adopted this collective thought mindset, we would realize that the forces causing climate change are much bigger than the individual and requires all of us to work together to create real change.

Being in such a pivotal stage in the world where our decisions now will directly affect the future state of the world, Dr. Hensley’s lecture did a great job connecting the power literature has to represent the current state of the world while also pushing us towards a solution of reversing the damage our past has caused.

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Native American Disrespect in United States

Professor Sonja Thomas’ presentation of Indians on the Reservation: Missionary Priests from India and Catholic Settler Colonialism was a very eye-opening lecture. In modern day news and classes, you don’t hear much about what goes on, on Indian reservations let alone the violence that is brought upon by the Catholic Church. But Professor Thomas was able to carefully articulate and force me to think about colonial history, Catholicism in rural Montana, and the migration of priests from India to this region. Which is why I looked more into the history of Native American abuse, Professor Thomas explained.

On May 4, 1493, the Papal Bull issued by Pope Alexander stated that any land inhabited by Christians was available to be “discovered”, claimed, and exploited by Christian rulers and declared that “the Catholic faith and the Christian religion be exalted and be everywhere increased and spread, that the health of souls be cared for and that barbarous nations be overthrown and brought to the faith itself. ” This Doctrine of Discovery set the framework that sanctioned the displacement and abuse of Native Americans, allowed treaty violations, and supported the United States in the disrespect and genocide of Native Americans. In the name of religious expansions, colonial settlers felt empowered enough to perpetuate violence against Native Americans. Throughout history, Native Americans have been disenfranchised and abused. With even more modern examples of the boys from the Covington Catholic school, who so confidently and openly disrespected Native Americans through heir racist and offensive statements. Native Americans have never been treated properly in the United States even till this day. Forced to endure constant beratement and abuse.

On July 5, 2018, Donald Trump gave a speech in Great Falls where he used the name “Pocahontas” as a way to express his displeasure of Senator Warren’s claims of being Indian. This type of racists and bigoted language that reduces a real cultural figure to a stereotype is often done to disparage American Indians. American Indians have the highest rate of suicide in Montana, and that is most likely linked to the negative effects this type of racism has on children academic and social development, self-esteem, and personal feelings of efficacy. Thankfully generations of Indian and non-Indian people have been working tirelessly to foster historical and cultural awareness in Montana and are not afraid to call out and denounce racially bigoted language such as Trump’s. The only way we can rectify past mistakes without acknowledging our past and working to make amends in the present.

In the questions part of the lecture, the idea of personal blind spots was brought up and solutions on how to combat them. I personally feel that I have a blind spot when it comes to the problems of Native Americans because it is so rarely brought up in mass media or even talked about in my personal circles. I feel like to overcome this, I should be more active to expand the topics and issues I am exposing myself to when it comes to issues in the United States, and reflect on how I can contribute to the fight even though I am not being directly hurt. But after explore more of the topics Professor Thomas introduced, I believe I have gained new insight on the topic.