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Organizing Fellow:
Ann Leone, French Studies & Landscape Studies
The 2009-2010 Neilson-Kahn Seminar is an innovative collaboration that includes the Kahn Liberal Arts Institute, the 2010 Neilson Professor, and the Landscape Studies Program. It will explore new principles for urban design that will allow people to forge connections with their fellow citizens and the natural environment by combining the powerful forces of ecology and democracy. The Seminar will integrate lectures, a research colloquium and an interdisciplinary community of scholars considering the topic of Ecological Democracy from the unique perspectives of their various disciplines.
The Seminar will consist of seven sessions, including three lectures by Randolph Hester, the 2010 William Allen Neilson Professor in the Landscape Studies Program; a lecture by landscape architect Marcia McNally (University of California at Berkeley), as well as lectures by three other visiting scholars whose work focuses on issues of ecological democracy. The series will conclude with a panel discussion in which Randolph Hester, Marcia McNally, and participating the Faculty Fellows discuss the issues raised during the lecture series with the audience.
The title of the Seminar series will be Ecological Democracy: Making the Landscapes for Everyday Tomorrow. Specific lectures will cover topics including an introduction to the principles and vocabulary of ecological democracy; conservation biology and spatial geometry, cultural diversity and the construction of space; how designers and planners move back and forth in scale as they design; narratives of place; an investigation of Randolph Hester’s ‘Big Wild’ Project in Los Angeles, in which abandoned government lands are being reclaimed as natural space for people, animals and plants; and the role and outcomes of ecological democracy in specific projects across the U.S. All lectures will be free and open to the Five College community and the general public.
Immediately after each lecture, Faculty Fellows will join Randolph Hester, Marsha McNally, and the day’s speaker for dinner and a colloquium meeting where they can conduct a more in-depth discussion of the topic covered in that day’s lecture.
The public lectures and colloquium meetings of the Neilson-Kahn Seminar will take place on Monday afternoons and evenings during Spring 2010. See below for a more detailed schedule.
Proposed Project Schedule (subject to change):
- Monday, February 1: Randolph Hester Neilson Professor Lecture: Design for Ecological Democracy
- Monday, February 8: Visiting Scholar Lecture: (Proposed speaker: Frances Moore Lappé)
- Monday, February 15: Randolph Hester Neilson Professor Lecture:Geometry and Activist Ecology
- Monday, March 1: Visiting Scholar Lecture: Marcia McNally
- Monday, March 22: Visiting Scholar Lecture: Setha Low
- Monday, March 29: Randolph Hester Neilson Professor Lecture: “Sex, Lies and Real Estate"
- Monday, April 12: Visiting Scholar Lecture: Anne Spirn
- Monday, April 26: Panel Discussion: Issues in Ecological Democracy
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