516 ARTS welcomes historian Bathsheba Demuth, PhD, in conversation with biologist Joe Cook, PhD. This final public forum, moderated by co-curator Subhankar Banerjee, looks beyond the Rio Grande to the larger context of the global crisis. Demuth is author of the new book Floating Coast: An Environmental History of the Bering Strait, a groundbreaking exploration of the relationship between capitalism, communism, and Arctic ecology since the dawn of the industrial age. Demuthreveals how people have turned ecological wealth in a remote region into economic growth and state power for more than 150 years. Through the lens of the natural world, she views human life and economics as fundamentally about cycles of energy, bringing a fresh and visionary spin to the writing of human history. Cook is a Regents’ Professor of Biology and Curator of Mammals at the Museum of Southwestern Biology at UNM. His research is both local and international, providing training in conservation and molecular evolution of mammals. Over the past three decades, Cook led international field projects and worked with communities, resource managers, scientists, and citizen scientists—from Alaska and Siberia to across Latin America—to build Archival Observatories that explore relationships between environmental change, conservation, management, and human health. In 2016, Cook received the Joseph Grinnell Award from the American Society of Mammalogists. In 2019, he will conduct research in Ecuador as a Fullbright scholar.

LOCATION: 516 ARTS
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