"Sea Snakes and Sovereignty: The Panatomic Canal Debate, Invasion Biology, and the Environmental Management State, 1964-1978" by Christine Keiner, Ph.D., Associate Professor of STS and History, Rochester Institute of Technology
Research interests of Christine Keiner.
This lecture will be held on April 7th. Lecture series is FREE and open to the public. Lectures begin at 7:30 p.m., with light refreshments at 7:10.
Abstract: During the Cold War the U.S. government invested millions of dollars researching the feasibility of using nuclear explosives to build a sea-level waterway to replace the aging Panama Canal. Although the “Panatomic” canal was never built, the controversy it sparked provided a forum for emerging ecological concerns which problematized the use of science and technology for US foreign and domestic policy, and which challenged longstanding technocratic assumptions of state-sponsored environmental management during the 1960s and 1970s.
Biography: Christine Keiner is author of “The Oyster Question: Scientists, Watermen, and the Maryland Chesapeake Bay since 1880”, which won the 2010 Forum for the History of Science in America Prize and Maryland Historical Trust Preservation Award for Outstanding Heritage Book. Her current book project is titled “Cold War, Hot Canal: Peaceful Nuclear Explosives, Invasive Sea Snakes, and the Panama Sea-Level Canal.”
Please join us in our newly renovated 300-seat auditorium for the 19th annual Coastal Perspectives Lecture Series. The auditorium is located on the second floor of the Academic Building (disabled accessible). Enter through the Academic Building or through the Student Center. There is a limited-capacity elevator on the first floor of the Academic Building. Please call us with your questions, or concerns, on the limited-mobility access points to the auditorium at 860-405-9025, or email Noreen.blaschik@uconn.edu.
This series is sponsored by The Connecticut Sea Grant College Program, the Department of Marine Sciences, UCONN and the Maritime Studies Program, UCONN. For more information and a campus map, visit our website at http://www.marinesciences.uconn.edu/Public%20Lecture/public.html or email CoastalPerspectives@uconn.edu.
To be added to our list-serve, send an email to CoastalPerspectives@uconn.edu.
For more information, contact: Noreen Blaschik at 8604059025