Asian Environmental Studies Curriculum Development Workshop Set for August 19-21, 2013

As part of its Asian Environmental Studies Initiative, supported generously by the Henry Luce Foundation, Hobart and William Smith Colleges will host a second Asian Environmental Studies Curriculum Development Workshop this summer. The workshop will be held August 19-21 on the HWS campus in Geneva, NY.

The aim of the workshop is to foster dialog among Asianists and non-Asianists in environment and sustainability fields about teaching and scholarship on human-environment topics in East Asian contexts. Through this workshop and other events such as the biannual (even years) Half the World Symposium at the Colleges, we hope to help build curriculum, community, and capacity around the theme of Asian Environmental Studies, starting from the foundations of rich and long-standing strengths in interdisciplinary Asian Studies and Environmental Studies programs on liberal arts campuses.

This year's workshop will feature an invited presentation by Dr. Paul Barber, Associate Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of California at Los Angeles. Dr Barber is a marine biologist who works in Indonesia's Coral Triangle.

Additional details on other speakers, workshop components, and registration coming soon!

Energy Expert Amory Lovins Speaks at HWS

Amory Lovins, Co-founder, Chairman, and Chief Scientist at Rocky Mountain Institute, will be kicking off the 2013 Hobart and William Smith Colleges President's Forum Speaker Series Thursday, September 13, 2012. Amory's talk, "Reinventing Fire: Bold Business Solutions for the New Energy Era" will showcase the work done in RMI's most recent major initiative, Reinventing Fire.

More on the President's Forum can be found here.

An archive of the talk will be posted soon.

Fourth "Half the World" Symposium March 2-3, 2012

The Fourth Biennial Half the World Symposium will be held March 2-3, 2012 at Hobart and William Smith Colleges. This year's symposium theme is "Environments, Cultures, and Sustainability." More details can be found here.

AES Workshop Invited Speaker 01: Brett Walker, "Toxic Archipelago"

Today's invited speaker for the Asian Environmental Studies Curriculum Development Workshop was Brett L. Walker, professor of History at Montana State University. Walker is a specialist in Japanese environmental and medical history, with a focus on early modern Japan. His lecture, "Toxic Archipelago: Subverting Narratives and Interdisciplinary Research in Japanese Environmental History," was centered on themes covered in his most recent text, Toxic Archipelago: A History of Industrial Disease in Japan (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2010).

Human-environment interactions in East Asia

Summer rice fields

(Yangshuo, Guangxi Province, China; photo by D. Magee)

Sorting paper at a government-run recycling center

(Beijing, China; photo by T. Drennen)