I’m off to Copenhagen tomorrow to a workshop on documentary film and international relations. I’ll be speaking on three of my favourite things: oceans, documentarie
s, and IR theory, focusing in particular on The Forgotten Space (which I’ve previously reviewed in Society & Space) and Leviathan. The workshop is sponsored by the Danish Institute for International Studies, expanding on a session that was held a few years ago at the annual meeting of the British International Studies Association.
Oceans, Films, & IR
Two Human Geography Lectureships available at Durham U.
See this posting on the Durham jobs website for more details.
“Of Other Seas” now published in Atlantic Studies
My article “Of Other Seas: Metaphors and Materialities in Maritime Regions” has just been published in Atlantic Studies. Although I love all my (literary) children equally, I think this is the “biggest” ocean work I’ve published since my 2009 Annals of the AAG article (the infamous “sea monsters” piece). I’ve posted the article in the “Ocean-Space” section of my website.
The article appears as part of a special issue on “Oceanic Studies”, edited by Hester Blum, Associate Professor of English at Penn State. The special issue is an excellent resource for people interested in both how we represent and how we think with the ocean. A subscription is required to view the entire issue, but Hester’s introduction is available on her website.
Science, Security, & the NSF
Science magazine reports today on a US House of Representatives bill that would revamp both the review criteria and the review process for National Science Foundation grants. Under the proposed legislation, the current criteria employed by peer reviewers -- under which referees assess whether a proposed research project has "Intellectual Merit" and whether it will have a "Broader Impact" on the scientific community and society -- is to be replaced by a three-part test under which each grant must be found to be:
Reflections on the latest efforts to politicize the National Science Foundation
Call for Papers: International Relations, Capitalism and the Sea: The Historical Sociology of Oceans and Inner Seas
BISA Historical Sociology Working Group Workshop
Birkbeck College, University of London
16 September 2013
This workshop explores the ways in which capitalism as a world-economy, as a mode of production and as a historical period has shaped and been shaped by the world’s oceans and inner seas. Considering that over 90% of the world’s trade in volume is carried by ship, maritime transport constitutes a core feature of contemporary capitalism.
This may be of interest to some who follow this blog. I'm not involved in organizing the conference but will likely attend.
Sekula’s The Forgotten Space reviewed in Society & Space
My review of Allan Sekula’s The Forgotten Space has now been posted on the website of the journal Society & Space. For those interested in seeing the film, there’ll be a a Passenger Films event that combine a screening with other explorations into representations/erasures of the ocean and its affect in London on June 18. I’ll post further details here as they get worked out.
Mapping the Road to Nowhere: Google in Iqaluit
Yesterday’s Guardian had an interesting story on Google’s mapping of Iqaluit, the capital of Canada’s northern territory of Nunavut. For students of Arctic imaginaries like me (and my co-author Jeremy Tasch, who sent me the link), it’s fascinating how both Google and the Guardian journalist combine two very different imaginaries of the Arctic held by outsiders: The Arctic as an inhospitable, remote place of mysterious paths (Northwest Passages?) and polar bears that can be conquered only through brute determination, and the Arctic as a land of wise local people who know its secrets and whose indigenous knowledge must be respected.
Combining my interests on the Arctic and the politics of mapping...
