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About the Lecture
Please join us for the Keynote Lecture of the 2023 One VCU Research Weeks event!
Bowhead whales have been known to three groups along the Bering Strait over the past two centuries: Indigenous Yupik and Inupiaq whalers, capitalist commercial whalers, and communist industrial whalers. Each imagined different normative relationships with whales, tied to visions of time, history, and the future. This talk explores how those ideas shaped interactions between human hunters and whales, and what we can discern of whales' own adaptations and— perhaps—ethical responses to their pursuers.
In-person and virtual attendance options are available for this event. Virtual attendees will receive a link after registering.
A reception will be offered for in-person attendees after the event from 5:30PM - 6:30PM. Registration is required.
About the Speaker
Bathsheba Demuth is writer and environmental historian specializing in the lands and seas of the Russian and North American Arctic. Her interest in northern places and cultures began when she was 18 and moved to the village of Old Crow in the Yukon, where she trained huskies for several years. From the archive to the dog sled, she is interested in how the histories of people, ideas, and ecologies intersect. In addition to her prize-winning book Floating Coast: An Environmental History of the Bering Strait, her writing has appeared in publications from The American Historical Review to The New Yorker and The Best American Science and Nature Writing. She is currently the Dean’s Associate Professor of History and Environment and Society at Brown University.
This event is part of the Environmental Humanities Speaker Series at the Humanities Research Center, supported in part by Virginia Humanities, and the Provost Lecture Series.
