The McGaffey Lecture Series Features the 2025 Rausing Prize Laureate

The History Department’s distinguished lecture will address museums and extinction.

Please join us on Friday, April 25, 2025 from 3 to 5:00 pm in the Union Fireside Lounge as we welcome environmental historian Dolly Jørgensen, of the University of Stavanger.

Dolly Jørgensen is professor of history at the University of Stavanger (Norway) and coeditor-in-chief of the journal Environmental Humanities. Earlier this year, she won the Gad Rausing Prize for Outstanding Humanities Research, awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History, and Antiquities. The Rausing Prize is regarded as the most prestigious award in Nordic humanities.

Dr. Jørgensen is the author of Recovering Lost Species in the Modern Age: Histories of Longing and Belonging and The Medieval Pig and has coedited several volumes, including Sharing Spaces: Technology, Mediation, and Human-Animal Relationships. Her latest Book, Ghosts Behind Glass: Encountering Extinction in Museums, is forthcoming from the University of Chicago Press in October, 2025.

Fifth Annual Jere D. McGaffey Lecture at UW-Milwaukee

“Politicizing Extinction: Memorializing Sea Lions in a Time of Conflict”

Dolly Jørgensen

Professor of History | University of Stavanger, Norway
2025 Rausing Prize Laureate | Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History, and Antiquities
Coeditor-in-chief | Environmental Humanities

3:00 PM | Friday, April 25, 2025
UWM Union Fireside Lounge
2200 East Kenwood Boulevard

Abstract: A rocky island in the sea between Japan and South Korea is the center of an ongoing political conflict about who should control the island and its surrounding waters. A key element of Japan’s claim is the historical practice of hunting sea lions on the island, as documented through hunting licenses issued by Japanese authorities beginning in 1905. This hunting, however, led to the sea lion’s extinction around 1954. South Korea, which currently occupies the island, interprets the sea lion extinction as demonstrating Japan’s illegitimate use of the island’s resources

The talk will have two parts: In the first part, Dr. Jørgensen examines the history of the sea lion and the practices which led to its extinction. In the second part, she will turn to the way those practices and the extinction are presented in museums and other public displays as support for national claims to the island of Takeshima/Dokdo. Taken together, these parts will demonstrate how extinction history can be politicized in a contemporary geopolitical conflict.

Public lecture, with reception to follow | All are welcome

Event organized by the UWM Department of History as part of its McGaffey Lecture series.
Hourly-rate parking is available in the UWM Union Parking Garage (entrance on E. Kenwood Blvd.)

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