UPDATED! Helsinki University Humanities Program, Environmental Humanities Forum Spring 2019 Schedule

Helsinki University Humanities Program, Environmental Humanities Forum

Spring 2019 Schedule

February 19 (Tuesday)

14.15-15.45

Veronica Walker Vadillo

University of Helsinki, HCAS

“The birth of riverine cultural traditions in the Mekong River during the Angkor era”

Metsätalo, sali A113 (Unioninkatu 40)

February 26 (Tuesday)

14.15-15.45

Katherine Borland

Ohio State University, USA

University of Helsinki

“How about Slow Activism?: Grassroots Environmentalism in Southern Ohio”

Metsätalo, sali A113 (Unioninkatu 40)

March 12 (Tuesday)

14.15-15.45

Dmitry Arzyutov

KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden

“Environmental Encounters: Woolly Mammoth, Indigenous Communities, and Metropolitan Scientists in the Soviet Arctic”

Kielikeskus (Language Center) sh.204 (Fabianinkatu 26)

March 19 (Tuesday)

14.15-15.45

Marcy Rockman

IPCC lead, Climate Change and Heritage Working Group

Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS), Washington, DC

“Cultural Heritage as a Source of Creativity for Climate Change”

Kielikeskus (Language Center) sh.204 (Fabianinkatu 26)

March 25 (Monday!!!)

14.15-15.45

Ekatherina Zhukova

University of Copenhagen, Denmark

“The Recuperation of the Chernobyl Children and Social Implications”

Porthania P724 (Yliopistonkatu 3)

May 14 (Tuesday)

14.15-15.45

Kati Lindström, Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden

“Nature or Culture? Negotiating Outstanding Universal Value of Mt Fuji in the Japanese World Heritage Nomination”

Kielikeskus (Language Center) sh. 405 (Fabianinkatu 26)

May 21 (Tuesday)

16.15-17.45 (!!!)

Veli-Pekka Tynkkynen

Aleksanteri Institute, University of Helsinki

“Hydrocarbon Culture in the making in Russia”

Kielikeskus (Language Center) sh.204 (Fabianinkatu 26)

INVITATION: Professor Katherine Borland @ HUH Environmental Humanities Forum, February 26 (Tuesday), 14.15-15.45

Dear Colleagues and Friends,
we kindly invite you to the next Helsinki University Environmental Humanities Forum

on February 26 (Tuesday) at 14.15-15.45

when KATHERINE BORLAND OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY, USA & UNIVERSITY OF HELSINKI will present
“How about Slow Activism?: Grassroots Environmentalism in Southern Ohio”

at Metsätalo, sali A113 (Unioninkatu 40)

Please kindly see Abstract and short Bio of Speaker below.

Looking forward to meeting/seeing you soon!

Twitter @helsinkienvhum
Facebook @helsinkienvhum
With kind wishes, Viktor Pál and Mikko Saikku

Abstract
Since the passing of the U.S. Clean Water Act in the early 1970s, the health of many city waterways has improved. However, legislation is not enough to turn around a system that rewards polluting industries, because they promise jobs with good wages to rural areas. Since the late 1990s, local people, supported by state and federal agencies as well as nonprofit advocacy groups (Sierra Club, the Nature Conservancy), have organized watershed protection groups to try to make change from the ground up, one stream at a time. In this talk I will discuss the work of two such groups in Southeastern Ohio, the Sunday Creek Association and the Friends of Scioto- Brush Creek. Both have made remarkable progress in their areas, which pose distinctive challenges. What can local activists teach us about promoting stewardship and environmental awareness in impoverished and conservative rural contexts?

Bio
Katherine Borland is Director of the Center for Folklore Studies at the Ohio State University. She is committed to developing university-community partnerships that center the needs and interests of communities. She is engaged in a multi-year, team-based, Participatory Action Research project on placemaking in rural Ohio, in which she studies grassroots environmentalism. She is currently editing a volume with John McDowell, Sue Tuohy, and Rebecca Dirksen, entitled Diverse Environmentalisms. Dr. Borland also collaborates with faculty in the OSU Theatre Department on Be the Street, a performance studies project on mobility, immobility and migration, located in the Hilltop neighborhood of Columbus, Ohio.

Helsinki University Humanities Program, Environmental Humanities Forum Spring 2019 Schedule

Helsinki University Humanities Program, Environmental Humanities Forum
Spring 2019 Schedule

February 19 (Tuesday)
14.15-15.45
Veronica Walker Vadillo
University of Helsinki, HCAS
“The birth of riverine cultural traditions in the Mekong River during the Angkor era”
Metsätalo, sali A113 (Unioninkatu 40)

February 26 (Tuesday)
14.15-15.45
Katherine Borland
Ohio State University, USA
University of Helsinki
“Slow Activism?: Grassroots Environmentalism in Southern Ohio”
Metsätalo, sali A113 (Unioninkatu 40)

March 12 (Tuesday)
14.15-15.45
Dmitry Arzyutov
KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden
“Environmental Encounters: Woolly Mammoth, Indigenous Communities, and Metropolitan Scientists in the Soviet Arctic”
Kielikeskus (Language Center) sh.204 (Fabianinkatu 26)

March 25 (Monday!!!)
14.15-15.45
Ekatherina Zhukova
University of Copenhagen, Denmark
“The Recuperation of the Chernobyl Children and Social Implications”
Porthania P724 (Yliopistonkatu 3)

May 14 (Tuesday)
14.15-15.45
Kati Lindström, Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden
“Nature or Culture? Negotiating Outstanding Universal Value of Mt Fuji in the Japanese World Heritage Nomination”
Kielikeskus (Language Center) sh. 405 (Fabianinkatu 26)

May 21 (Tuesday)
16.15-17.45 (!!!)
Veli-Pekka Tynkkynen
Aleksanteri Institute, University of Helsinki
“Hydrocarbon Culture in the making in Russia”
Kielikeskus (Language Center) sh.204 (Fabianinkatu 26)

INVITATION: Veronica Walker Vadillo @ HUH Environmental Humanities Forum, February 19 (Tuesday), 14.15-15.45

Dear Colleagues and Friends,

we kindly invite you to the next Helsinki University Environmental Humanities Forum
on February 19 (Tuesday) at 14.15-15.45
when Veronica Walker Vadillo, Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, University of Helsinki will present

“The birth of riverine cultural traditions in the Mekong River during the Angkor era ”

at Metsätalo, sali A113 (Unioninkatu 40)

Please kindly see Abstract and short Bio of Speaker below.

Looking forward to meeting/seeing you soon!

Twitter @helsinkienvhum

Facebook @helsinkienvhum

Blog: https://blogs.helsinki.fi/environment

With kind wishes, Viktor Pál and Mikko Saikku

Abstract

Since the discovery of the Angkor civilization on the shorelines of the Tonle Sap Lake, it has been assumed that rivers played an important role in the establishment of this polity. Despite this acknowledgement, most of the research conducted in Angkor so far has focused on the perception that Angkor was an agrarian state, a position that has obscured the Angkor’s complex cultural responses to its watery environment. In this presentation I seek to tease out the main characteristics of said responses by analyzing the extensive corpus of nautical iconography in the context of human-environment interactions in aquatic spaces. These representations are unique in archaeology inasmuch as they present a wealth of information of activities that took place on board vessels, from pilgrimages to sacred places, to warfare, festivals, and elaborated rituals performed on water (both in man-made and natural spaces). Additionally, they show that the people of Angkor tapped into Indian iconography to modify their vessels, creating an eclectic tradition that survives, albeit modified, in the royal barges parades of Thailand. I hope to demonstrate that the represented nautical scenes point to political and cosmological responses to the cyclical amphibian landscape they inhabited, and provided the kings of Angkor with a religious framework with which they exerted control over the river network and the people living in and around it. The study applies the interdisciplinary theoretical framework known as the Maritime Cultural Landscape, incorporating data from environmental sciences, archaeology, nautical technology, ethnography, and history.

Bio

Veronica Walker Vadillo is a maritime archaeologist specialized in Southeast Asia working as a postdoc at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced studies. She recently obtained her doctorate from the University of Oxford, for which she focused on Angkor’s riverine cultural landscape. The thesis analyzed the different ways in which the people of Angkor adapted to their environment in terms of practical usage (i.e., landscapes of communication and transport) and in terms of mind-set (i.e., cosmology and ritual behavior). For her current position she is analyzing data she obtained during her doctoral studies to determine the role of nomadic fishing communities –present in the Mekong River until the early 20th century– in state development during the Angkor era. Her main interests are maritime ecosystems and trade pulses, that is, the rhythm at which maritime trade happens, in the Southeast Asian branch of the Maritime Silk Road. She actively participates in academic forums like the Asia-Pacific Regional Conference on Underwater Cultural Heritage (APConf) and the International Congress on Underwater Archaeology (IKUWA), and was invited as an expert to the first UNESCO meeting to nominate the Maritime Silk Road as World Heritage.