Evaluating Impact
Session Objective: to reflect on this course and how we can all work to more purposefully redress environmental racism
We have essentially reached the end of our time together. This last week focuses on a reflection of key takeaways and personal areas for continued growth.
Today’s Learning Log includes one final reading, and then asks you to evaluate the course as you put the final touches on your Community Campaign and complete Part II of your Identity Introspection.
Unearth: the long-term impacts of environmental injustice through this archaeological investigation of colonialism, climate change, and community resilience on Island Nations. As you read, consider what the article’s findings suggest about the need for interdisciplinary and mutiscalar action.
Kristina Douglass is an archaeologist whose current work investigates human-environment interaction in Madagascar. She integrates archaeological, paleoecological, ethnohistorical, ethnographic, and biological data to understand the dynamic relationship between communities and their environment over time.
Dr Douglass’ work aims to bridge divides between anthropology, conservation and development, while critically addressing the role of archaeological narratives of human environmental impact in conservation and policy discourse. Her work contributes to current debates over conservation, extinction, and sustainability in one of the world’s biodiversity hotspots, with the view that archaeological data can help refine approaches to modern-day conservation issues and build more holistic understandings of human-environment dynamics.
Jago Cooper studied at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London, where he developed his interests in Latin American Archaeology and Human-Environment Dynamics. Jago then worked on rescue excavations in and around London for the Museum of London Archaeology Service and Wessex Archaeology before returning to the Institute of Archaeology UCL to complete his masters and doctoral research.
Dr Cooper joined the School of Archaeology and Ancient History at the University of Leicester in 2007 as a Lecturer in Archaeology. In 2008, Jago was awarded a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship for a three year research project about The Archaeology of Climate Change in the Caribbean. In October 2012, he was appointed as the Curator and Head of the Americas at the British Museum.
Review: your Grade Report from Becca, and make sure you’re all caught up on your Learning Log and course assignments. Swing by office hours if you have any questions or want to talk through anything from the course.
Reorient: your own positionality as you explore Maya’s art which uses an atlas to consider representation, change, depth, and identity.
Maya Lin is known for her large-scale environmental artworks, her architectural works and her memorial designs. Her unique multi-disciplinary career has “resisted categories, boundaries and borders” (Michael Brenson). In her book Boundaries, she writes “I see myself existing between boundaries, a place where opposites meet; science and art, art and architecture, East and West. My work originates from a simple desire to make people aware of their surroundings”.
Nature and the environment have long been central concerns for Lin, who attended Yale University where she earned a BA in 1981 and a Master of Architecture degree in 1986. Lin was thrust into the spotlight when, as a senior at Yale, she submitted the winning design in a national competition for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial to be built in Washington, D.C. She has gone on to a remarkable career in both art and architecture, whilst still being committed to memory works that focus on some of the critical historical issues of our time.
Lin’s art explores how we experience and relate to landscape, setting up a systematic ordering of the land that is tied to history, memory, time, and language. Her interest in landscape has led to works influenced by topographies and geographic phenomena.
Complete: your very last Learning Log for this course via the form below.
Submit: your Community Campaign. Make use of the Assignment Brief to guide your work, and submit your final version via this form by 11:59pm on Monday 13 December. You can also submit via Blackboard or email to the professor, if you prefer.
NAT_GEO300 - Assignment Brief - Community Campaign.pdfWrite: Part II of your Identity Introspection, a self-reflection of your positionality and learning in this course. Make use of the Assignment Brief to guide your work, and submit your final version via this form by Friday 17 December at 7:15pmEastern. You can also submit via Blackboard or email to the professor, if you prefer.
NAT_GEO300 - Assignment Brief - Identity Introspection 2.pdf