This is a new “table of contents” for the blog. I posted one of these a little more than a year ago, and it was time to update it! You may find this useful to bookmark, or share with someone unfamiliar with the blog. 2016 has been a great year for guest posts and new […]
Archive | Coastal History
Isaac’s Coastal History blogs
The Coastal History Blog 39: ‘Beneath the Pavement—the Beach!’: An Account of the Urban Beaches Workshop at the University of London
I’m delighted to introduce the Coastal History blog’s fifth guest post (and the third guest post in the last twelve months!). Elsa Devienne is a Fellow at the Princeton Mellon Initiative in Architecture, Urbanism, and the Humanities. She also holds a position as ‘maîtresse de conferences’ in the department of American studies at Université Paris […]
The Coastal History Blog 38: Sea Blindness, or Ocean Optimism? (part 3 of 3): Epiphany among the Manta Rays
In my last post, I discussed problems of scale. How can we visualize (and discuss) ocean-sized problems from our modest vantage point? Is the “oceanic selfie” a path to a higher level of consciousness, or an anthropocentric dead end? When that post went online, I was in Hawaii and had just finished a couple […]
The Coastal History Blog 37: Sea Blindness, or Ocean Optimism? (Part 2 of 3): A Tale of Four Tweets
In my last post, I discussed why sea blindness is not the most useful way to characterize twenty-first century sensibilities. Let’s face it, it just doesn’t make much sense at a time when beachgoers have to be warned, “Don’t take selfies with seals.” Instead, I argued, we should think critically about sea visibility, which is […]
The Coastal History Blog 36: Sea Blindness, or Ocean Optimism? (Part 1 of 3)
The average Briton is unaware that 95% of the goods they buy arrived on a ship. When asked to name a “well-known British maritime personality,” most respondents said, “Captain Jack Sparrow.” These results are set forth by the Maritime Foundation as evidence of sea blindness.[i] Duncan Redford is one of the few people so far […]
The Coastal History Blog 35: A Cosmopolitan Bronze Age Port?
In Mediterranean studies, does the cosmopolitan port town rank alongside “sun and sea… olives and myrtle… the commonplaces pervading the literature, all description and repetition”?[1] Articles with titles like “Cosmopolitanism Reconsidered” and “The Cosmopolitan Mediterranean: Myth and Reality” have raised doubts about the whole project.[2] It’s one thing to state that that two or more […]
