HIGH POINT, N.C., Oct. 15, 2015 – High Point University will host Dr. Ashley Carse, an expert in environmental anthropology, for a presentation on the history and impact of the Panama Canal. The event will be held at 4 p.m. on Oct. 30 in the David L. Francis Lecture Hall at Earl N. Phillips School of Business. It is free and open to the public. Tickets are not required.
In the 20th century, the Panama Canal provided vital infrastructure for globalization and the formation of global communities, but its construction also had cultural and environmental implications. Carse will speak about the history of this area and its widespread effects on the environment, ecology and the indigenous and afro-Panamanian communities who once occupied the land but benefitted significantly less from its construction.
“The canal is a major piece of infrastructure in the global economy,” says Dr. Josh Fisher, assistant professor of anthropology and director of environmental studies at HPU. “This event is intended to demonstrate the uneven consequences for different groups and continue our campus discussion of just communities from the university’s Common Experience program. Our students will be able to connect this discussion with their coursework and engage with a researcher who is actively studying ecology and local/global communities.”
Carse is an assistant professor in the Department of Human and Organizational Development at Vanderbilt University. Previously, he was a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow in Science, Technology, and Society at the University of Virginia and a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Environmental Anthropology at Whittier College. He received his doctorate in anthropology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2011. He recently published a book, “Beyond the Big Ditch: Politics, Ecology, and Infrastructure at the Panama Canal.”
This event is co-sponsored by the departments of Environmental Studies and Anthropology at HPU.