Workload
My PhD program in the geography department is set up so that after the first year students are meant to be done with their coursework. In an attempt to do just this I am taking four classes this term instead of the normal three, meaning that I'm staying extra busy with research papers now as this term is in its final quarter. It's always fun to see how the ideas and topics of seemingly disparate classes intersect, and I'm definitely going through that now.
In "African Ecology and Development" with political ecologist Judy Carney, author of "Black Rice: The African origins of rice cultivation in the Americas," I'm writing about biopiracy in Uganda. Biopiracy is when first world corporations, governments, and universities go into third world countries and look for plants that may be transformed into lucritive pharmecutecals. This would be great except that more often than not the nation-state from whom the plants are taken - who depend on their natural resources to operate in a global economy - are not compensated at all.
Next up, and rounding off my tour of the global south, is "Historical Geography of South America," taught by Stephen Bell, author of "Campanha Gaúcha: A Brazilian Ranching System, 1850-1920." For my paper I will be analyzing the accounts of European travelers to Argentina in the 1920s - fun topic!
My third class is in the history of science department and is called "History of Political Economy and Technology." This is the second term of a two term research seminar, so I'm trying to finish a paper for this class that if done well will be the first chapter of my dissertation. The paper is about John Kellogg (inventor of Corn Flakes) and his turn-of-the-century health sanitarium in Battle Creek, Michigan. I'm writing about how he portrayed the body - specifically the digestive system - in his writings, and how his ideas about eating healthy are related to the economic forces of the time that helped to create agricultural landscapes full of wheat and corn. The professor for this seminar, Norton Wise, is a former Institute for Advanced Studies physicist at Princeton who transformed himself in the 1980s into a historian of science. He was part of a bigger movement in the academy at that time which began to critique the power of science and its methods - critiques that have become the norm nowadays. He is a mesmerizingly clear and conceptual thinker and has a special penchant for geography and analyzing features on the landscape.
Last, but certainly not least, is a geography seminar led by my major advisor Denis Cosgrove and a humanistic geography professor named Nick Entrikin. The seminar is called "Place and Landscape," and we essentially study the history of how these foundational human geographical terms have been used by geographers in the past 50 years or so. It is one of the few, if not the only, graduate course of its kind, and is a large part of the reason I wanted to come to UCLA. For this class I am working on a theoretical paper about how "place" and "body" have overlapping as well as contradictory meanings and characteristics.
In "African Ecology and Development" with political ecologist Judy Carney, author of "Black Rice: The African origins of rice cultivation in the Americas," I'm writing about biopiracy in Uganda. Biopiracy is when first world corporations, governments, and universities go into third world countries and look for plants that may be transformed into lucritive pharmecutecals. This would be great except that more often than not the nation-state from whom the plants are taken - who depend on their natural resources to operate in a global economy - are not compensated at all.
Next up, and rounding off my tour of the global south, is "Historical Geography of South America," taught by Stephen Bell, author of "Campanha Gaúcha: A Brazilian Ranching System, 1850-1920." For my paper I will be analyzing the accounts of European travelers to Argentina in the 1920s - fun topic!
My third class is in the history of science department and is called "History of Political Economy and Technology." This is the second term of a two term research seminar, so I'm trying to finish a paper for this class that if done well will be the first chapter of my dissertation. The paper is about John Kellogg (inventor of Corn Flakes) and his turn-of-the-century health sanitarium in Battle Creek, Michigan. I'm writing about how he portrayed the body - specifically the digestive system - in his writings, and how his ideas about eating healthy are related to the economic forces of the time that helped to create agricultural landscapes full of wheat and corn. The professor for this seminar, Norton Wise, is a former Institute for Advanced Studies physicist at Princeton who transformed himself in the 1980s into a historian of science. He was part of a bigger movement in the academy at that time which began to critique the power of science and its methods - critiques that have become the norm nowadays. He is a mesmerizingly clear and conceptual thinker and has a special penchant for geography and analyzing features on the landscape.
Last, but certainly not least, is a geography seminar led by my major advisor Denis Cosgrove and a humanistic geography professor named Nick Entrikin. The seminar is called "Place and Landscape," and we essentially study the history of how these foundational human geographical terms have been used by geographers in the past 50 years or so. It is one of the few, if not the only, graduate course of its kind, and is a large part of the reason I wanted to come to UCLA. For this class I am working on a theoretical paper about how "place" and "body" have overlapping as well as contradictory meanings and characteristics.
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