Room 1, Olin Science Center, Colby College

The class “Environmental Humanities: Energy and Utopia” will be hosting a screening of the film The Gleaners and I. This 2000 French documentary film by Agnès Varda features various kinds of gleaning. It was entered into competition at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival and later went on to win awards around the world. (Unrated, 82 […]

Film director Miki Dezaki presents his powerful debut work Shusenjo: The Main Battleground of the Comfort Women Issue. This highly acclaimed documentary examines the enduring, divisive legacy of the Japanese military’s wartime use of sexual slaves, officially referred to as “comfort women.” Even in today’s Japan, seventy-four years after the end of the Pacific War, […]

Kate Evans is founder and director of Elephants for Africa and an award-winning behavioral ecologist and conservation biologist. Her interest in male elephants has expanded to focus on the social and ecological requirements of male elephants in the context of a human landscape. Evans is an honorary research fellow at the University of Exeter, an […]

Ecosystems can “flip” and, as a result of reinforcing feedback mechanisms, “lock” into alternative stable states. Robert Steneck, professor at the University of Maine School of Marine Sciences, studied this process in a kelp-forest ecosystem in Maine for nearly four decades and found two stable states: one dominated by green sea urchins and crustose coralline […]

Designer and innovator Paul Discoe is managing partner for O2 Artisans Aggregate (O2AA), an urban industrial eco-park in Oakland, Calif. He is also a design consultant for Japanese-style temples, restaurants, houses, and furniture. His studio at O2AA includes a small workshop for prototypes and one-of-a-kind objects. A longtime student of Zen Buddhism, Discoe is an ordained Buddhist […]

From pole to pole, human societies are increasingly having a notable and negative impact on their surrounding environment through land-use practices, degrading ecological communities with social and economic consequences that in turn harm communal well-being, but the answer to these challenges lies in a deep understanding of environmental processes and the careful observation of environmental […]

A talk by Teddy Simpson, Colby Class of ’17, program manager, Hurricane Island Foundation, which integrates science education, applied research, and leadership development through year-round educational programs and a seasonal, environmentally sustainable island community. Current research explores community-driven questions in the emerging kelp and scallop aquaculture industries. The foundation engages students, fishermen, scientists, teachers, and community […]

Robert Steneck, professor at the University of Maine School of Marine Sciences, presents the fall 2018 Hollis Lecturer in Environmental Studies. Ecosystems can “flip” and, as a result of reinforcing feedback mechanisms, “lock” into alternative stable states. Steneck studied this process in a kelp-forest ecosystem in Maine for nearly four decades and found two stable states: […]

One of the most distinctive developments in American science and engineering during the last 50 years isn’t any specific discovery or invention. Instead, this revolution involves something even more fundamental: re-envisioning ideas about who can and should become an engineer or scientist. This talk by Amy Sue Bix, Iowa State University, explores that transformation, reviewing the […]

Luc Sante’s lecture and slide talk proposes that American regional photographers in the 20th century, far outside the discussions occurring in major cities, were experimenting with the medium in often radical ways. Many of these photographers were little documented — we may not even know their names—and we can have little idea of what they […]

Ken Ilgunas walked nearly 2,000 miles across North America, following the proposed route of the Keystone XL pipeline, from Hardisty, Alberta, to the Gulf Coast of Texas. Learn about Ilgunas’ adventure, the world’s first modern journey across private property, on which he trespassed over one of the most ignored, yet beautiful, regions of our continent—the […]

Alan Robock, distinguished professor of climate science in the Department of Environmental Sciences at Rutgers University, will discuss the climatic and humanitarian impacts of a nuclear war. A nuclear war between any two nations with each country using 50 Hiroshima-sized atom bombs as airbursts on urban areas, would inject so much smoke from the resulting fires into […]

Excess nutrient runoff from agricultural fields can enter nearby streams and rivers, harming sensitive species, contaminating water supplies, and fueling downstream algal blooms and low-oxygen “dead zones.” Research by Jen Tank, Galla Professor of Biological Sciences, University of Notre Dame, examines the benefit of two conservation strategies that potentially prevent excess nutrients from being transported […]

Artist-critic Roger White will lead an inquiry into art criticism beginning with an enumeration of personal motivations and proceeding, via a typology of forms of art writing, toward a proposition about the future. Organized by Colby’s Art Department. Contact: Kristine Johnson, art@colby.edu, 207-859-5630

A foray is defined as an attempt to become involved in a new activity or sphere or an incursion into enemy territory. For a consumer economist who studies genetically engineered (GE) food policy, both definitions fit. This talk with Jane Kolodinsky, chair, department of community development and applied economics, and director, Center for Rural Studies, […]

Architects Tim Lock and Riley Pratt, in collaboration with students in Colby’s Architectural Design Workshop, explore how architectural practice is changing for a carbon-neutral built environment. Organized by Colby’s Art Department and supported by the department’s Clara M. Southworth Lecture Fund.

The present crisis in U.S. democracy has its origins in our history and political system. Much the same can be said for our slow and inadequate response to climate change now underway. David W. Orr, counselor to the president at Oberlin College and Paul Sears Distinguished Professor of Environmental Studies and Politics, Emeritus, will discuss how […]

Increasingly the seafood sustainability discussion includes calls for transparency as a solution to combatting illegal, unregulated, and unreported fishing (IUU) and mislabeling and fraud. Seafood-value chains remain some of the most opaque in our global food system, and thus traceability is being forwarded as a way to validate transparency claims. Yet whether or not sustainability […]

Artist and educator Luis Camnitzer, whose conceptual artwork, The Museum Is a School, occupies the façade of the Alfond-Lunder Family Pavilion, will combine a personal reflection on revolution with a prescription for renewal without complacency in the overlapping realms of art and education. Having come of age in Uruguay during a period of widespread revolution […]

With a performance career spanning more than 30 years, Yoko Hiraoka is widely recognized as a master performer and teacher of Japanese traditional string instruments and vocal styles. Hiraoka returns to Colby to sing and play highlights of famous music for the biwa (four-stringed lute). The Tale of the Heike is a lyrical account of […]

Marketing sustainable products to a mass consumer audience has had ups and downs the past two decades. Many sustainable products have failed to gain mass appeal. Why? Doug Sweeney, chief marketing officer at Nest and VP marketing at Google, will share his experience leading marketing for big global brands and also smaller start-ups. From the […]

Low-income and minority communities are often characterized by lack of access to healthy and affordable foods. Large grocery stores are sometimes scarce while food outlets such as gas stations, corner stores, and pharmacies abound. Though terms like “food desert” have been used to describe this phenomenon, this talk by Dorceta Taylor will examine the problematic […]

Although the events it describes occurred more than 200 years ago, the term “Haitian Revolution” has only come into widespread use in the past few decades. By putting the events that led to the western world’s first abolition of slavery on the same level as the American and French revolutions, this new language profoundly changes […]

Benard Kibet ’18 used his $10,000 Project for Peace award to bring running water to his village in Kenya. This film by Milton Guillén ’15 tells Kibet’s story and its effect on his community. Shot entirely on location, the 12-minute film is an exploration of what’s possible when one individual decides to give back to […]

The hit film Bend It Like Beckman, an inspiring comedy about a young Sikh girl in England who rebels against her orthodox parents to chase her dream as a soccer player, will be shown in anticipation of a lecture by the film’s director, Gurinder Chadha. Chadha will give the 2016 Compagna-Sennett Religious Studies Lecture Oct. […]