Speaker: Dr. Nik Heynen
Distinguished Research Professor
Department of Geography
University of Georgia
Biography: Dr. Heynen’s research has explored areas of urban political ecology, abolition ecologies and geographies, and geographies of neoliberalism and racial capitalism. This work theorizes and demonstrates empirically how racialized processes of capitalism, white supremacy, and settler colonialism produce structurally unjust geographies and ecologies. For nearly a decade he has been working with the Saltwater Geechee community on Sapelo Island on the restoration of traditional agricultural practices and flood mitigation made necessary as a result of descendants losing their land to development pressure and increasing sea-level rise.
Geography Colloquium: Re-Earthing Sapelo: Abolition Ecology and the Struggle to Save the Land
Thursday, November 2, 2023
3:00-3:50 PM (Period 8)
Fine Arts Building B, Room 105
University of Florida
Abstract: Since 1803, fourteen generations of Gullah Geechee people on Sapelo Island have fought for their freedom, working to preserve their culture, which they see as intimately connected to the land. In this talk, I will discuss ideas central to abolition ecology and the organizing struggles central to fighting cultural genocide on Sapelo Island. More specitically, I will discuss the emergence of solidarity through a vision proposed by Mrs. Cornelia Walker Bailey. a Saltwater Geechee griot, and how her son, Maurice, now leads an effort to revive a series of heritage crops as a strategy to promote economic development and cultural preservation.
Public Lecture: Echoes of “Bombingham”: The Longue Durée of Racial Terror and Geographies of White Menace
REFRESHMENTS SERVED
Friday, November 3, 2023
2:00-3:30 PM
Reitz Union, Senate Chamber
University of Florida
Abstract: During January and February of 2022. fifty-seven Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) received bomb threats. When the FBI released an audio recording from the white male youth who single-handedly made them, he stated his reason for threatening mass violence was that these institutions had “too many Black students”. During these same months, there was a continued proliferation of legislative attacks on efforts to educate about histories of violence and racial inequity in the U.S. UCLA School of Law reports that since 2020, local, state, and federal government entities across the U.S. have introduced 750 bills, resolutions, executive orders, and other measures that target diversity education and the study of racial equality. In this talk, I will work through the connections between these events by centering the bombing of the 16th St. Baptist Church in Birmingham Alabama in September of 1963 as well as a speech given by a young white lawyer named Charles Morgan Jr. the day after the bombing to better understand the longue durée of racial terror through the geographies of white menace.
All are welcome to attend.
For more information, email Dr. Jane Southworth at jsouthwo@ufl.edu.