W&L Lecture Examines Conservation in Mexico
A lecture on conservation titled “Where are the Parks? Great Ideas, Cultural Contexts, and Conservation in Mexico” will be presented by Emily Wakild, assistant professor of history at Wake Forest University, on Thursday, March 4, at Washington and Lee University.
The talk is part of a lecture series, “Nature and Politics in the Americas,” which is free and open to the public. All talks will be held on Thursday evenings at 7 p.m. in the Leyburn Library’s Northen Auditorium.
The series is examining ways in which the physical environment helped shape human history in Latin America, and discussing the ecology of international trade, conservation and national parks, climate history and environmental justice. It is funded by the National Science Foundation and the history department, environmental studies and Latin American and Caribbean studies at W&L.
Wakild focuses her research on the social and environmental history of Latin America, the history of the Mexican Revolution, the history of conservation and national parks, and climate history. She teaches courses on Latin American and environmental history and is the author of several articles in the field, including “Border Chasm: International Boundary Parks and Mexican Conservation 1935-1945” in the July 2009 edition of Environmental History.
Following Wakild’s presentation, the March 18 lecture is by Alton Byers of the Mountain Institute and is titled “50 Years of Climate, Culture, and Landscape Change in the Mt. Everest Region,” in which Byers provides comparisons with the Peruvian Andes.
The final lecture on March 25 on environmental justice is “Peasants, Political Violence, and the Environment in Chile” by Thomas Klubock of the department of history at the University of Virginia.
