Virginia Nazarea, Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Ethnoecology/Biodiversity Laboratory, University of Georgia
“Ribbons of Memory: From Diversity to Resilience”

Abstract: Using the framework of panarchy, this lecture elaborates how cultural and biological memory replenish our options. Drawing on examples from work on seed saving, immigrant gardening, and repatriation, it reflects on landscapes of memory as opposed to landscapes of wounds, or of loss.

Professor Nazarea has done fieldwork in the Philippines, Ecuador and the American South. She is the author of three monographs:

• Heirloom Seeds and Their Keepers (University of Arizona Press, 2005)
• Cultural Memory and Biodiversity (Univversity of Arizona Press, 1998)
• Local Knowledge and Agricultural Decision-Making in the Philippines (Cornell University Press, 1995)

She is also the editor of Ethnoecology: Situated Knowledge/Local Lives (University of Arizona Press ,1999) and most recently, co-editor of Seeds of Resistance, Seeds of Hope: Place and Agency in the Conservation of Biodiversity (University of Arizona Press, 2013).

Co-sponsorship by the Department of Anthropology, the Master of Sustainable Peacebuilding Program, and the Year of the Humanities.