2025 Mossman Lecture | Utopia and Tropicality with UCLA Professor Susanna Hecht (hybrid)

Name: 2025 Mossman Lecture | Utopia and Tropicality with UCLA Professor Susanna Hecht (hybrid)
Start: 2025-03-19T17:30:00-04:00
End: 2025-03-19T19:00:00-04:00
Location: McConnell Engineering Building

Schedule

Wed Mar 19 2025 at 05:30 pm to 07:00 pm

UTC-04:00

Location

McConnell Engineering Building | Montreal, QC

La version française suit
Trenholme Dean of Libraries Guylaine Beaudry and the team at the McGill Libraries are pleased to invite you to the Elizabeth B. McNab Lecture under the auspice of the Mossman Endowment of McGill University*. The lecture entitled "Utopia and Tropicality: Ideologies of natures, sciences, people and politics in thinking about and inhabiting Amazonia" will be given by Professor Susanna Hecht, Professor of Urban Planning, UCLA School of Public Affairs/Urban Planning and Professor of International History, Graduate Institute of International Development Studies in Geneva.
Question and answer session moderated by Oliver T. Coomes, Department of Geography, McGill University.
Description: Amazonia was originally described as a land without Law, Creed or King: essentially a social tabula rasa on which the virtues or economies of European societies could be inscribed, their deficiencies corrected, or sovereignty implemented through the making of new kinds of policies. While it is not much recognized, Amazonia has been a fecund terrain for social and planning experiments since Discovery, and there is a consistent history of social interventions especially in the last 100 years which we outline in this talk. These engagements all took place in a context of unfamiliar and often mis-assessed biotic exuberance. This tropicality “the essence of nature” and tropicalism: ideologies about the Amazonian Tropics stand in contrast to the broadly deployed colonial idea of Orientalism which has been consistently misapplied to Amazonia and much of the New World tropics. Orientalism (and I simplify here) was largely about civilizational decadence, despotism, the Islamic world, and recognizably deeply inhabited environments. The New World of Amazonia—its tropicalism-- was viewed politically as culturally empty or nascent and ecologically unmanaged---a world ripe for providential completion and utopian or socioenvironmental experiments of many kinds. More recent archeological research and environmental history are revealing the depth and complexity of populous native occupation and management. We discuss these differing Amazonian engagements and what these forays through Amazonian history might say about its future.
Location (in person): McConnell Engineering Building, room 304 (3480 University St, Montreal, Quebec, H3A 0E9).
Online attendance is an option.
RSVP required: https://libraryrooms.mcgill.ca/event/3883942.
*Endowment supported by The Friends of McGill University Inc.
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La doyenne des Bibliothèques et titulaire de la chaire Trenholme, Guylaine Beaudry, et l’équipe des Bibliothèques de l’Université McGill* ont le plaisir de vous inviter à la conférence Elizabeth B. McNab sous l’ égide du Fonds de dotation Mossman de l’Université McGill*. La conférence intitulée « Utopie et Tropicalité : Idéologies de la nature, des sciences, des peuples et de la politique dans la pensée et l'habitation de l'Amazonie » sera donnée par la professeure Susanna Hecht, professeure d’urbanisme à la UCLA School of Public Affairs/Urban Planning et professeure d’histoire internationale à l'Institut de hautes études internationales et du développement à Genève.
Une séance de questions et réponses sera animée par Oliver T. Coomes, du Département de géographie de l'Université McGill.
Emplacement: McConnell, Pavillon (génie), salle 304 (3480 rue University, Montréal, Québec, H3A 0E9.
Il est possible d’assister à l’événement en ligne.
La confirmation de présence est obligatoire. RSVP : https://libraryrooms.mcgill.ca/event/3883942
*Dotation soutenue par Les Amis de l’Université McGill Inc.