Regional Seas

Ecocide is the missing 5th Crime Against Peace in detail:

The first of a series of academic research papers examining various aspects of a law of Ecocide. A groundbreaking piece of research, this paper sets out the evidence that the United Nations had for a period of at least 11 years been working on Ecocide as a Crime Against Peace. This research paper is relevant to: all academics, lawyers and practitioners involved in the human rights implications of climate change, environmental refugees and environmental destruction.

"Maritime Humanities: History and Beyond" (Newcastle University, 1 November 2018).
Abstract:
"70% of the Earth’s surface is water, but the humanities and social sciences remain stubbornly attached to the land. The maritime, or “blue”, humanities aim to redress the balance by focusing on the human relationship with the world's oceans, seas and other watery regions of circulation, exchange and interaction with non-human nature. This event brings together historians and other scholars to consider the past, present and future of the maritime humanities, using the recently published volume Oceanic Histories (Cambridge University Press, 2018) as its springboard.

The event also inaugurates the chair of Professor Stella Ghervas, a specialist in Russia and its maritime history, whose recent appointment begins a new chapter in the maritime humanities at Newcastle University. This event is co-sponsored by the Newcastle University Humanities Research Institute and the School of History, Classics and Archaeology and will be followed by a reception.

Confirmed participants include David Armitage (Harvard University), Stella Ghervas (Newcastle University), Matthew Grenby (Newcastle University), Sujit Sivasundaram (Cambridge University) and Philip Steinberg (Durham University)."

Seas outline and order land masses and remind us that everything is but an island. Maps rely on seas to define land. Seas compete with deserts for crossings, imaginings, measurings, and depictions. Due to their vast aqueous nature the seas can never be fully grasped and retain through time and space the draw of mystery and awe that is manifested in wondrous imaginings of conquests attempted, but never fully realized. In key texts and images from the Middle East, the seas emerge as conflicted hierophanic spaces of good and evil. These extremes manifest themselves in aquatic representations of geography, cartography, and art. The presentations in this panel explore a variety of representational imaginings of the sea in carto-geographic artistry emanating out of the Middle East.

Cet article presente une demarche de recherche collaborative et innovante, consacree au renforcement et a l'institutionnalisation d'une anthropologie politique de la mer etroitement articulee aux sciences de la nature. Il dit d'abord ce que les sciences sociales du politique ont a apporter a la comprehension de la « gouvernance » de la mer, etablie en vue de sa « gestion durable ». Il presente ensuite la structure cooperative de recherche ApoliMer (Anthropologie politique de la mer), qui traite cette question en proposant de faire de la gestion des « socio-ecosystemes » marins et cotiers un demonstrateur des transformations contemporaines du politique. In fine, il laisse entrevoir la plus-value d'une articulation, entre les sciences humaines et sociales et les sciences de la nature pour produire une analyse critique des categories de pensee et d’action attachees a la «gestion systemique» de l’environnement.

Stella Ghervas,  "Calming the Waters? Toward a New History of the Black Sea", Harvard University, April 24, 2017, 4:15-6:00 pm

Abstract
Writing a consistent narrative of the Black Sea is no easy task. Located north of the Mediterranean Sea and communicating with its elder sister through a single waterway, it has attracted very diverse populations from Europe and Asia on its shores. As a confluence point between the Balkans, Central Asia, and the Middle East, it raises the difficult issue of what “Europe” really is, and how it blends into Asia.

This paper confronts these problems by covering the long human history of the Black Sea through the perspective of circulations of people, goods and ideas, especially its moments of “openness” and “closedness”. It considers in particular the maritime, fluvial and terrestrial routes, Greek and Roman colonization, and the successive migrations of nomads across the plains of the northern shores; then for modern history, the rise of the Ottoman and Russian Empires culminating in the famous Eastern Question; and finally the conflicts and issues surrounding the former Soviet republics, the geopolitics of mineral oils, and the environmental issues that have emerged in the last decades.

In an area of the world where national historiographies are still prevalent and imply geopolitical stakes, this radical long-range perspective on the history of the Black Sea carries a strong potential for increasing the political reconciliation through greater knowledge of the region’s history.

Bio
Stella Ghervas is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and an Associate of the Department of History at Harvard University. She is currently also the Mihaychuk Fellow 2016-2017 at the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute. Among her many publications are "Réinventer la tradition: Alexandre Stourdza et l’Europe de la Sainte-Alliance" (2008), which was awarded the Guizot Prize of the Académie Française, and "Lieux d’Europe: Mythes et limites", ed. (2008). Her new book "Conquering Peace: From the Enlightenment to the European Union" is forthcoming from Harvard University Press. She is now working on a new monographic project, "Calming the Waters? A New History of the Black Sea, 1774-1920s", and co-editing a volume on the cultural history of peace in the Enlightenment.

Link: http://www.huri.harvard.edu/events/calendar/g-3-73lt6npbt8vsn012g0fjmjmpdk_201704242015.html