Interdisciplinary conference to explore global images of the environment

On Nov. 8-10, the conference "Imaging Environment: Maps, Models and Metaphors" will bring together scholars from the humanities, the social sciences and the natural sciences to explore, on a global scale, questions that arise from differences in the ways that disciplines represent the environment. The Stanford Humanities Center and the Woods Institute for the Environment are joint sponsors of the event, which is free and open to the public.

William Cronon, the Frederick Jackson Turner and Vilas Research Professor of History, Geography and Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin, will deliver the keynote address, "The Culture of Landscape and the Nature of Politics," at 7 p.m. Nov. 8 in Cubberley Auditorium. The conference will continue on Thursday, Nov. 9, and Friday, Nov. 10, at the Humanities Center, with sessions beginning each day at 10 a.m.

Visiting speakers will include Lawrence Buell, professor of American literature at Harvard University; Eric Lambin, professor of geography at the University of Louvain, Belgium; Elinor Ostrom, professor of political science at Indiana University; Michael Pollan, professor of journalism at the University of California-Berkeley; Harriet Ritvo, professor of history at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; José Sarukhán, professor of ecology at the National University of Mexico; Candace Slater, professor of Spanish and Portuguese at UC-Berkeley; and Anne Spirn, professor of landscape architecture and planning at MIT.

The conference also will include a short film on landscape change in China, 10,000 Shovels, by Karen Seto, assistant professor of geological and environmental sciences at Stanford.

On Thursday evening at 7 p.m., the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics will present a concert of music on ecology and the environment at the Knoll. (Seating is limited.)

A related art exhibit, Sliding Scale, by Gail Wight, associate professor of art at Stanford, will be on display at the Art Gallery from Nov. 7 through Dec. 10. A reception will be held at the gallery on Nov. 10 beginning at 6 p.m.

More information, including a complete schedule, is available online at http://shc.stanford.edu/.

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