Environmental Humanities Seminar with Joseph Whitson

"Wildernessing: Settler Colonialism and the Outdoor Industry's Campaign to 'Never Stop Exploring'"

Speaker: Joseph Whitson, 2022-23 MHC Postdoctoral Fellow

Respondent: Pamela Klassen

RSVP FOR JOSEPH WHITSON'S SEMINAR

Joseph Whitson received his PhD in American Studies from the University of Minnesota. He works at the intersection of environmental humanities, Indigenous studies, and new media, interrogating the role of settler-colonialism in the natural world. His current project, Marketing the Wilderness: The Digital Battle over Public Land in the United States, is a digitally integrated book manuscript that unpacks the colonial foundations of the outdoor industry and the ways in which Indigenous activists are using social media to challenge them. As a public historian, Joe runs Indigenous Geotags, a social media-based organization that tells the Indigenous history of American national parks and public lands. He has previously worked on publicly engaged projects with organizations like the Humanities Action Lab, the National Park Service, and the Minnesota Historical Society. He previously held a Postdoctoral Fellowship in Digital Humanities at Northwestern University.

Pamela Klassen is the William Lyon Mackenzie King Professor of Canadian Studies at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University. Her research interests include religion, colonialism, treaties, and public memory in North America and Turtle Island.

Registration is required for this event. You will receive a link to the pre-circulated paper after filling out the RSVP form (linked above).

About the Series

The Mahindra Humanities Center presents an Environmental Humanities seminar series with our 2022-23 postdoctoral fellows.