Talk: Cruising

Cruising

Jill Casid (Art History, University of Wisconsin)

Tuesday, February 23 / 4:00 PM
McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB

In the rapt attention to digital transformation and the consideration of global cultural flows and liquid images, we may run the risk of losing sight of the material consequences of the physical and material flows of goods and people by boat, that seemingly antiquated technology of European conquest, catechism, and commerce. Cruising calls for attention not just to traveling images but also to the practice of leisure travel and not just the environmental cost of the tourist industry - the world’s largest by the end of the 20th century - but also the ongoing transformation of material environments to meet the desires and expectations of a particular kind of tourism, the floating world of the cruise ship boat.

Jill H. Casid is Associate Professor of Visual Culture Studies and Director of the Center for Visual Cultures at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her research in visual studies includes her book Sowing Empire: Landscape and Colonization (2005) and her forthcoming book Shadows of Enlightenment.

Sponsored by the IHC’s Oil + Water Series and the Community Environmental Council.
For more information, please visit:
http://www.ihc.ucsb.edu/cruising/