After sit-down dinner on Thursday, come interact with visiting speaker Dr. Garrett Nelson, President and Head Curator of the Leventhal Map & Education Center at the Boston Public Library.
He will be delivering a 20-minute talk in the Garonzik, followed by audience Q&A.
THE HERE IN TOGETHERNESS: PLACE, TERRITORY, AND THE CHALLENGE OF COMMON GROUND
What do geography and place have to do with the social question of togetherness? In some ways, location is the primordial dimension of group identity, and it appears even in metaphorical language—for instance, when we say that someone is “inside” or “outside” of a community. Yet in many of our most visible public debates, geography is either taken for granted, brushed aside, or forced to serve as a cartographic shorthand for exclusionary forms of belonging. In this talk, I will examine how place and territory might help to anchor civic questions about what people have in common with one another.
Garrett Dash Nelson is a historical geographer who currently serves as President & Head Curator at the Leventhal Map & Education Center at the Boston Public Library. His scholarly work focuses on the relationship between community structure, geographic units, and political ideology, and he specializes in the urban, regional, and environmental history of Boston and New England. In addition to his qualitative work, he also has methodological interests in geospatial analysis and the digital humanities. He holds an AB from Harvard College in social studies and visual & environmental studies, an MA from the University of Nottingham in landscape & culture, and a PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in geography.