The Geography Department is now on Facebook!
Friday, September 24, 4-5pm, LA4-100
Dr. Andrew Jenks
Associate Professor
Department of History
California State University, Long Beach
Title: "The Political, Social, and Cultural Geography of Toxic Waste Disaster: A World History Perspective"
Abstract: Politics, power, society, and technological development are inextricably intertwined in modern world history. Given this intricate matrix of connections, spectacular technological failure is bound to have momentous physical, political and social consequences. What happens when the instruments of progress turn into exploding nuclear reactors, killer clouds of toxic chemicals, and toxic waste dumps filled with deadly carcinogens? At what point do societies realize that pollution no longer smells like progress but is really just pollution and might even kill you? Is progress to die for?
Thursday, October 7, 5-6pm, TBA
Dr. Matthew Sparke
Professor of Geography and International Studies, Adjunct Professor of Global Health
University of Washington
Title: “Imaginative Geographies of Global Health”
Abstract: Today’s concepts and practices of global health are profoundly influenced by
the ways in which communities of sickness, medical intervention and public health are imagined geographically. This presentation begins by considering the basic shift from the scale of the national to the transnational involved in reimagining public health and medical care as global concerns. It outlines the older influences of colonial and post-colonial medicine that have prefigured this re-scaling of public health and health-care as global health, highlighting how certain contemporary developments – including, the global movements of microbes, medicines, medical patients and medical practitioners – are often overshadowed and shaped by the double-standards and geographic disparities of imperialism. The talk then turns to the ways in which changing geographic conceptualizations of contagion, community and care are also now influenced by emergent geographic ideas about globalization and planetary interdependency. These ideas simultaneously enable and disable various ways of developing global health policy and
intervention plans. For the same reason, critical reflection on the unexamined geographic assumptions involved is vital for policy-makers, practitioners, and educators who care about global health and imagine its emergence from the spatial shadows of empire.
Friday, November 19, 4-5pm, LA4-100
Dr. Ray Sumner
Professor of Geography
Long Beach City College
Title: “Easter Island – Transformations and Identity Constructions of “the world’s remotest inhabited island”
Abstract: A research trip to Rapa Nui as part of the Geoscience Diversity Enhancement Program 2 led to an enquiry into the multiple and conflicting images of this island from its European “discovery” through to the current tourist boom. Other actors in the creation or imposing of identities include Chilean government agencies, academic anthropologists, the media, and the tourist industry.
