Department Lectures and Seminars Schedule

 

2011-2012 Intersections and Bousfield Lecture Series Schedule

Updates are ongoing, so please check back for more lectures and further information
LOCATION KEY: SS = Sidney Smith Hall, 100 St. George Street; PG = Physical Geography Building, 45 S
Date & Time Location Title Description Speaker
October 25, 2011, 5-7pm  SS2125  Private Property and Human Rights: A Mis-match in the 21st Century? In eighteenth century foundational human rights documents the “inviolable and sacred” nature of property is asserted (Right 17, Declaration of the Rights of Man, 1789). The 1948 U.N. Universal Declaration on Human Rights continues in this vein, declaring that “everyone has the right to own property.” During the 20th century multi and bi-lateral aid agencies often operationalized these ideas through a focus on land reform for the landless rural poor. Yet in the 21st century the world has changed. For the first time in global history, most people live in cities, and the future will make the global increasingly urban. The questions explored here are: what is the role for private property when the poor are increasingly residents of informal settlements in mega-cities? Are 18th century human rights concepts relevant in the 21st century? I investigate why it is difficult to come to a definitive conclusion on a matter that has been so preoccupying to modern social and political discourse. Harvey Jacobs, Distinguished Bousfield Visitor (University of Wisconsin-Madison)  
October 28, 2011, 3-5pm SS2125 The Queer Time of Creative Urbanism: Family, Futurity and Global City Singapore Singapore’s rise as a ‘global city’ has attracted much scholarly attention, especially as it has turned to ‘creative city’ strategies in recent years. In the literature, important critiques have been leveled – in line with critiques made of other global and creative cities around the world – that the city-state’s developmental efforts are rational, bureaucratic, hierarchical, narrowly economistic and, most importantly, socially polarizing.  In this talk, I expand these arguments by demonstrating that Singapore’s global/ creative city project is also heteronormative and that this heteronormative logic is tied in fundamental ways to its broadly socially polarizing effects.  Natalie Oswin (McGill University)
November 4, 2011, 2-3pm PGB101     Mike Church (UBC)
November 4, 2011, 3-5pm  PGB101  Distribution of Biocultural Diversity: Patterns and Predictions  The study of biocultural diversity involves a search for patterns across landscapes. At its core, biocultural diversity is a geographical phenomenon, showing an oftentimes strong positive correlation in the distribution of biodiversity and socio-linguistic diversity. Research conducted at the University of Florida over the last decade has resulted in the development of a database and a series of maps that portray the linkages between biodiversity and linguistic diversity globally as well as in a variety of regions throughout the world. The work has also involved the development of statistical methods for the analysis of biocultural diversity, in an effort to identify and predict major factors of biocultural diversity persistence or loss. Rick Stepp (University of Florida) Co-sponsored by the Faculty of Forestry, the Centre for Environment and Aboriginal Studies.
November 18, 2011, 3-4pm  PGB101   Boreal Forests and Peatland Carbon Cycling under Changing Climate and Wildfire Regimes   Merrit Turetsky (University of Guelph
November 25, 2011,
3-5pm 		 SS2125  Following Policies: Trans-Urban Adventures in the Governing of the City This presentation will contribute to the conceptualization of cities-in-the-world by first outlining the conceptual and empirical challenges of theorizing the urban/global nexus in both relational and territorial terms. It argues that the most useful and appropriate approach to understanding contemporary urban governance in global context is to develop a conceptualization that is equally sensitive to the role of relational and territorial geographies, of flow and fixity, of global contexts and place specificities, of structural imperatives and embodied practices, in the production of cities. I use this approach to consider the case of the governance of downtown development in cities of the ‘global north’, using the example of the Business Improvement District ‘model’, its introduction into the UK and its place in the on-going economic crisis and its subsequent introduction elsewhere. Kevin Ward (University of Manchester) 
December 16, 2011
3-4pm 		 PGB101 Land surface modeling and assimilation in Environment Canada's upcoming operational prediction systems
Dr. Stephane Belair, Environment Canada
 January 13, 2012, 3-5pm  SS2125  Alternative Social Planning This presentation will explore the notion of “Alternative Social Planning” which re-evaluates traditional planning to one that is more responsive to the needs of Toronto’s increasingly culturally and ethnically diverse demographics. I will discuss my perspectives on the idea of neighbourhood planning vs. planning for (often non-geographically based) ethno-specific communities and how members of the Alternative Planning Group approached planning and advocacy. I will also discuss how the Chinese Canadian National Council Toronto Chapter tried to put Alternative Social Planning into practice from an organizational and community perspective. In addition, I will discuss the importance of community based research and the role of community and academic partnerships in moving forward an alternative social planning agenda.  Karen Sun (Visitor, Planning, UofT)
January 16, 2012,
3-5pm		 SS2125  Mr. Harper goes North: Paternal Sovereign, Operation Nanook, and Canadian Arctic sovereighnty This paper will focus on Prime Minister Stephen Harper and recent Canadian Arctic policies and strategies. As part of that interest, I explore the summer visits to the Arctic by PM Harper, in the midst of sovereignty and training exercises (Operation Nanook) designed to ‘test’, ‘excite’ and ‘reassure’ Canadian citizens including indigenous peoples and Northern communities that Canadian sovereignty is assured. By drawing on literatures associated with critical/feminist geopolitics, sovereignty and ‘nudge’ politics, I consider how Canadian Arctic sovereignty is conceptualized via graduated and anticipatory logics, which appear to naturalize the role of a traveling paternal sovereign (PM Harper). Co-sponsored by the Canadian Studies program. Light refreshments will be served Klaus Dodds (Royal Holloway, University of London) Co-Sponsored by the Canadian Studies Program
 January 20, 2012, 4-6pm  SS2125  Indigenous Self-Determination and Economy  The relationship to development for Indigenous Nations has most often been seen through the colonial/neo-colonial relationship that has been in place between the Nation State and the Indigenous Nations. The set of assumptions include: State Sovereignty over Indigenous Sovereignty, economic development from a western/european values perspective and the non-viability of Indigenous Nations and communities. Self-Determination for Indigenous Nations requires a different understanding, approach and outcomes for the sustainability of an Indigenous economy and the re-emergence of healthy Indigenous Nations.  Randy Kapashesit, Chief of the MoCreebec Council of the Cree Nation
January 24, 2012,
3-5pm		  Wallberg Building, Room WB258  Human Exposure Studies: Understanding Sources, Exposure and Internal Dose Human exposure to environmental contaminants is a complex process. To better understand and estimate human exposure, we have to address the issue holistically. That includes identifying sources of contaminants and releasing of contaminants from the sources, determining levels of contaminants in various environmental matrices through which exposure could occur, and measuring the concentrations of contaminants in humans that may have health implications. Our research interests are to address these issues. In this presentation, several studies targeting different areas of the human exposure will be discussed. The objective of the presentation is to show-case the kind of studies we took in order to achieve our research goals of providing human exposure data to support government regulatory activities.  Dr. Jiping Zhu, Senior Research Scientist, Air Contaminants Lab Exposure and Biomonitoring Division Health Canada
 January 27, 2012 3-5pm  SS2125 Making Space for Health  A graduate student panel featuring ‘works in progress’ on health and its multiple manifestations: as policy and planning issues, as lived experience, as work, etc. This panel will feature the work of graduate students in the Department of Geography and Planning. The speakers are John Paul Catungal (on racial politics, place-making and AIDS services), Antony Chum (on neighbourhood effects on health and well-being), Nehal El-Hadi (on media & planning: CAMH & the revitalization of Queen West), Caitlin Henry (on home and the politics of nurse migrations) and Marcie Snyder (on urban Aboriginal mobilities and health). The panel will be moderated by Sarah Wakefield (Associate Professor, Geography and Planning).  Panel (organized by JP Catungal)
February 3, 2012 (3-5pm)   SS2125  Revolution in Venezuela?: the contradictions of the Chavez government Is Venezuela’s Bolivarian revolution under Hugo Chávez truly revolutionary? Most books and articles tend to view the Chávez government in an either-or fashion. Some see the president as the shining knight of twenty-first-century socialism, while others see him as an avenging Stalinist strongman. Despite passion on both sides, the Chávez government does not fall easily into a seamless fable of emancipatory or authoritarian history, as these essays make clear. The lecture will discuss the nature of social change in contemporary Venezuela and explore a number of themes that help elucidate the sources of the nation’s political polarization. While the future of Venezuela’s national process is unclear, the principles elaborated by the Chávez government are key to understanding the emergence of a new Latin American left. Thomas Ponniah (George Brown College and Harvard University) 
February 10, 2012, 2-4pm  Munk, Room TBA Large Hydropower Dams, Fish Migrations, Livelihoods, State Territorialization, and Geopolitics in the Mekong River Basin In recent years the importance of wild-capture inland fisheries in the Mekong River Basin to human livelihoods and food security has become increasingly evident, with estimates of fish catches rising from just 357,000 tons in 1991 to over 3 million tons in 2005, making the Mekong Basin home to the world’s most important inland capture fisheries. This rise in catch statistics is not due to fishing actually increasing, but is rather because of better understandings of the significance of wild-caught fisheries to rural livelihoods. Paradoxically, just as Mekong fisheries have gained more recognition, efforts to develop destructive large hydroelectric dams have accelerated. Dams are being planned both on the mainstream Mekong River and on large important tributaries of the Mekong River, and would block crucial fish migrations. These dams would also variously alter water quality and hydrological conditions, impacting fish habitat and leading to declines in fisheries far from where the dams would be built. Adopting a political ecology approach, this paper considers crucial geographical issues associated with fisheries and large dam development in the Mekong River Basin. In particular, I consider how national, regional and international politics; state territorialization; and power relations are affecting the geopolitical landscape as it relates to dams and fisheries. Ian Baird (University of Wisconsin-Madison) Co-sponsored with, and initiated by, the Centre for Southeast Asian Studies
February, 13, 2012, 11-1pm  SS2135 Choosing to be HIV positive? Economics, Epidemiology, and HIV prevalence The epidemiological approach to HIV transmission in sub-Saharan Africa focuses predominantly on changing individual behaviour. The logical extension of this concept of individual ‘choice’ over HIV risk has been the payment of cash transfers to encourage safe sex in Tanzania. This approach has been bolstered by the application of microeconomic methodology to the issue of HIV transmission, which have become increasingly fashionable. While the microeconomic focus on individual behaviour has strong resonance with the dominant public health approach, it is clear that microeconomic arguments have had more influence due their apparent ability to explain the patterns emerging from new datasets on HIV/AIDS. However, these microeconomic models are not always good predictors of the empirical record, and more than that, the way that individual choice is approached in such models is highly problematic. ‘Choice’ as understood by mainstream economists is likely to bear little reality to the sexual decision-making of many adults in areas affected by HIV/AIDS. Instead, this paper argues that sexual behaviour can only be understood in terms of the structural economic and social context. By abandoning the narrow focus and flawed methodology of microeconomic models, a wider and more helpful consideration of the factors that determine HIV risk in any one place can be developed. Professor Deborah Johnston, SOAS, London University. Co-sponsored by the Development Seminar 
 February 17, 2012, All day TBA   AAG Practice Day    
 March 2, 2012, 3-4pm  PGB 101      Prof. Deborah Swackhamer (University of Minnesota)
 March 2, 2012, 4-6pm  SS2125      Dr Maya Eichler (Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Toronto)
March 9, 2012, 3-5pm  SS2125     Panel
 March 16, 2012, 3-5pm  TBA  Territory's Continuing Allure The role of the territorial state has fundamentally changed in recent decades in the wake of the communications revolution; the explosion of transnational social, political, and economic formations; accelerated mobility across international boundaries; and the inability of states to address pressing socio-economic and environmental issues. Yet in the rush to document and assess the networks, flows, and relational spaces that are part of this shift, it is important not to overlook the continuing hold of modernist territorial ideas on the geographical imagination. Geographical writings on territoriality, spatial socialization, state-driven knowledge production, and regimes of territorial legitimation provide tools for understanding the power and inertia of modernist territorial ideas, which continue to influence patterns of identity and state practice in wide-ranging and significant ways. Contemporary interpretations of the doctrine of self-determination and its application in the Western Sahara case demonstrate that modernist ideas about territory continue to have far-reaching political and social consequences. It follows that any balanced assessment of the contemporary political-geographic order should not ignore the ways in which the continuing allure of territory plays into questions of boundedness versus flow, fixity versus relationality, and deterritorialiation versus reterritorialization.  Alec Murphy (University of Oregon)
March 23, 2012  TBA 
  Steve Herbert (University of Washington) Co-sponsored with the Centre for the Study of the United States 
 March 30, 2012, 3-4pm  PGB 101      Dr. Jennifer Marlon (University of Wisconsin - Madison)
 March 30, 2012, 4-6pm  SS2125      Dr. May Chazan (Postdoc, UofT)