Professor Loren McClenachan is a marine ecologist who is interested in long term changes to marine animal populations and the overall ecosystem. Her research focuses on historical ecology and the applied use of baselines, fisheries conservation, and marine extinction risk and consequences. Professor McClenachan aims to quantify ecological change and identify conservation success over centuries and across large geographic areas in order to attempt to stop declines and promote recovery of marine animals and ecosystems. This week’s lecture started with a discussion regarding the decline in coral reefs and fishing. I found the fishing aspect to be very interesting because Professor McClenachan was able to essentially quantify the decline in animal life in the ocean. She showed us a series of pictures throughout the years of 1950s and the 2000s with people holding up trophy fish. Immediately I was able to notice the apperant size difference of the fish throughout the years. The fish were getting smaller. Professor McClenachan quantified the value and stated that the biomass of these trophy fishes have been reduced by 90%. I thought this statistic was such a good one because it really allowed each person in the lecture to fully understand what we have done to the waters. These types of trophy fish were finally listed as a “Species of Concern” by the government and their size is now on the rise. Again, this is interesting because it can be shown than when we want to help, we can easily make a difference in species decline and the ever so diminishing environment.
Rethinking the Origins of the Cold War
Professor Heather Streets-Salter at Northeastern University gave a talk titled “The Chill Before the Cold War: The Roots of Anti-Communism in the Interwar Period.” As someone who is not a history buff this title was slightly confusing, however, she was nice enough to give an alternate title for those of us not as historyoriented, “The Noulens Affair in 1931 Shanghai.” This title made a little bit more sense to me. To start, Professor Streets-Salter began by explaining the affairs that went on in Shanghai in 1931 that essentially centered around two people: Ducroux and Bassa. They were arrested for assisting in the management of an unlawful society (the Malayian Communist Party). At this point in time, communism was a significant threat to already developed and developing countries around the world. When they were arrested an address book was recovered that led colonial authorities to Ducroux’s contacts all over. In Shanghai, the Shanghai Municipal Police hit the jackpot- they discovered the links between Moscow and Shanghai, and Shanghai and Southeast Asia via Hong Kong. It led to 276 arrests and confiscation of significant amounts of communist literature. This was a big deal at the time and created international uproar. Many of the people arrested were using aliases and no countries knew their actual origins.
Art is just art?
In this lecture, Dr. Carin Berkowitz, the Executive Director of the New Jersey Council for the Humanities, spoke about why anatomists would ever be asked to analyze statues. Her talk had many aspects, one of which focused on Charles Bell’s school of anatomy. I found it compelling that Berkowitz’s talk had a similar overall theme of bridging the gap between science and the humanities. We’ve seen this theme is almost every single lecture given in the series- something I personally enjoy. With myself being a psychology major with a concentration in neuroscience I have been on the line between science and the humanities for years. I have the opportunity to take both types of classes and I find it unfortunate that people often think they are “science people” or “humanities people.” It’s interesting that these two platforms are just coming together now to potentially solve real world problems.
Social Conflict Seen in both Science and the Humanities
Suegene Noh, an assistant professor of biology at Colby College, gave a lecture titled, “How Current Genomes are Shaped by Evolutionary Pasts” where she looked at how lives of organisms are shaped by their social interactions. Dr. Noh’s talk was definitely my favorite of the series so far- most likely because of my more scientific background. I think she did an incredible job linking the more specific scientific talk with the humanities. Additionally, her topic resonated the most regarding the presence of the past for me. Dr. Noh is an evolutionary biologist whose research focuses on how social interactions among microbial organisms shape their genomes. Additionally, these interactions affect how our genomes evolve so that current patterns of DNA sequence variation can be used to detect past evolutionary events. Dr. Noh took some time to explain how a social amoeba works and its microbial symbiont. As a specific example, she used how competitive interactions among amoebas has caused certain genes to evolve more rapidly, and how associating with an amoeba host may have caused symbiont genomes to shrink in size. Essentially, all of this is amoebas developing into multicellular organisms. The Dictystelium Discoideum “Dicty” social amoebae aggregate together, form little mounds, and the mounds elongate into slugs, which are multicellular organisms.
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The Environment and how it Affects Sexuality
Greta LaFleur, an Associate professor of American Studies at Yale University, gave a lecture titled, “Toward an Environmental Theory of Early Sexuality.” Her talk explores how eighteenth- century natural history- the study of organic life in its environment- actually provided the intellectual foundations of the later development of the scientific study of sex. She started by explaining her first of two books called “The Natural History of Sexuality in Early America” which brings together the history of sexuality and early environmental studies. It explores how sexual behaviors were understood in the eighteenth-century world. Her 2nd book is currently in the making and delves into the relationship of cultural and legal responses to sexual violence to the history of sexuality.
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One Piece to the Puzzle
To start, I am relatively unversed in the English world (I’m a science person if you will) and had to go in and do slight research on Elizabeth Bishop and William Blake to gain a much better understanding about Dr. Wai Chee Dimok’s lecture. By the end of the lecture I found this to be funny because one of her main points was that it is time for the sciences and humanities to merge. One of the questions asked by an audience member was all about why such a large amount of people cannot see that climate change is real and happening right now. And the worst part- they don’t see that it can be helped by humans just changing their actions. Dr. Wai Chee Dimok urged that people often struggle with doing their own research, which is why they do not understand. She pushed the idea of science and humanities merging so science can lay down objective evidence, statistics, and studies while the humanities can take that information and lay it out into a version that many more people would understand.
Is there unity in diversity?
Projit Bihari Mukharji’s lecture was all about how genetics affect race and the how Indian scientists have considered the dangers about using genetics to categorize people. He brought in many studies, surveys, and examples of how India has gotten their data- a few of them throughout history were significantly questionable ethics wise. Throughout this presentation, I personally found two things in this talk to resonate with me. 1) How genetics can affect racism. 2) The ethical issues regarding consent in genetics. To start, it is interesting to think about how genetic information can be interpreted both in science and more importantly society. In a sense, the material can be used to support racist principles. Years ago, I took Introduction to Anthropology and it within the course we spoke about how intelligence was measured with head size…different races had different measurements, thus some races were perceived to be overall smarter when compared to other races. This is an example of how genetics can be used in society to marginalize a complete race. Lastly, Dr. Mukharji’s lecture touched upon how the methods the IGVDB used to gather data in the genetics field reinforced the Indian caste system. This point pertains to the ethics of consent regarding genetics. What is allowed and how can people give consent when they are no longer living? Are relatives able to consent for those that cannot? Simply put, some sort of standard needs to be regulated regarding genetics and the ability to receive consent for data.
Will Literature Help Us Enter a New World?
Dr. Nathan Hensley’s lecture was titled, Action After Nature: Climate Crisis & The Force of Literature. The lecture focuses on the ecologically collapsing world and the power of literature in regards to addressing it. At the beginning, Dr. Hensley outlined his talk by entertaining us with statistics and brief stories in relation to environmental losses of specific species, unbelievable natural disasters, and changes in weather patterns. He then went on to tell us how there are often much deeper meanings behind what seems like shallow writing. Continue reading “Will Literature Help Us Enter a New World?”
A Misleading Education
Sonja Thomas titled her talk, “Indians on the Reservation: Missionary Priests from India and Catholic Settler Colonialism.” By the end of the lecture I was very interested in her words “missionary priests.” As an associate professor at Colby, Thomas introduced a mixture of topics in her lecture around the ideas of the presence of the past, the U.S. Catholic Church’s often violent relationship with indigenous Catholics and non Catholics, and also Indian priests migrating to rural Minnesota to preach. There was definitely a lot of information to unpack but Thomas was engaging while explaining her publications and additionally her own study being run presently.
The Presence of the Past: Angela Merkel and a Unified Germany
Chancellor Angela Merkel has been in power in Germany since 2005. She has been the leader of the biggest European economy for a significant time, which is very unusual. Merkel’s use of the presence of the past is very prevalent within her speeches and the way she addresses the public. There was little indication that she would become a leader within memory politics. One of the most interesting factors about her coming to power is that she is the first East German to be chancellor. This is definitely one of the reasons her version of memory politics is most likely very different than her predecessors. Her knowledge of the significant events in Germany such as the Nazi period, the holocaust, and the Berlin Wall would be shaped by very different factors compared to past governing figures and a significant amount of people within Germany itself. Memory politics is the organization of collective memory by political figures. In general, it is the way events are remembered, recorded, or simply discarded. Looking forward, memory politics may determine the way history is written and passed on.
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