Coupling Biodiversity Dynamics and Human Impacts in the Islands of Polynesia

The Coupling Biodiversity Colloquium builds on a widely acknowledged gap in the understanding of biodiversity on remote islands - the impact of humans, and how native and more recent elements of biotas interact over time. In the first year of funding, we brought together researchers from diverse disciplines, and focused on the origins of native biodiversity. For the proposed workshop, we will bring together a more diverse spectrum of researchers from the fields of archaeology, anthropology, organismal biology, systematics, theoretical biology, conservation biology, and invasion biology, to focus on 4 themes: (1) Pre-human biodiversity in the islands of Polynesia, (2) Impacts of humans on biodiversity broadly, allowing inference into future trajectories and extrapolation to mainland situations, (3) The nature of the biota introduced by the first Polynesians and interactions with native organisms, and (4) Causes and impacts of recent arrivals especially consequences for levels of modern diversity in the islands.  The Coupling Biodiversity Colloquium 4-day conference will be held on December 10-13, 2012.    

Professor: Rosemary Gillespie

Diplomacy & Culture

Diplomacy is a political practice that is also a cultural practice. From its modern origins in fifteenth-century Italy diplomatic networks have been centrally linked to the transmission of culture. At the level of diplomatic theory, writers as diverse as Machiavelli and Kissinger offer reflections on the nature of negotiation and representation that include reflections on the nature of fiction-making, on history, and on language. At the level of practice, the history of diplomacy is also the history of cultural influence--of gifts, of persuasion, of symbolic representations of power. Literature, art, and music are all deeply imbricated in the history of diplomacy, even as diplomatic practice and theory draw upon the resources of the cultural field in the dynamics of negotiation. From Demosthenes to Wikileaks, both culture and diplomacy share a concern for the circulation of objects and the circulation of information. Books, paintings, poems, animals, secrets, encomia, and time are all tokens in the game of diplomatic negotiation.

Time Zones: Hybrid Art in a Global Context

The phrase “time-based art” is used in visual art contexts to track the movement from so-called “static” art into durational forms. For some in the performing arts, however, duration is already a traditional element of the form. Even as we celebrate this interdisciplinary field, many still view it (and review it) from the perspective of particular disciplines. While the history of 20th and 21st century artistic experimentation is one that challenges these divisions, we find that the habits and divisions of labor within different institutions—the museum, the theatre—persist. Moreover, the training of artists and of critics separate skills and evaluative barometers within different art fields. Everyone may be making, curating, and evaluating “hybrid” art work, but our sense of its innovation will be different depending upon whether it is housed in a museum or a theatre, or whether it is written about by a critic of dance or a critic of visual arts.