A Century Beyond Muir Thursday, November 13, 2014 California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI)

A Century Beyond Muir
Thursday, November 13, 2014
California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI)
UCLA Campus
Keynote Speakers
JOHN VAN DE KAMP Esq. has had a distinguished career of public service and engagement. He was the
28th Attorney General of California from 1983 until 1991. Prior to that, he served as Los Angeles County
District Attorney from 1975 until 1981. He also served as Director of the Executive Office of U.S.
Attorneys in Washington, DC. He is a Director of the Los Angeles Conservation Corps and an eloquent
proponent for the restoration of the Hetch Hetchy Valley.
RICHARD WHITE is a Pulitzer-Prize nominated historian of the American west, environmental history
and Native American history. He is the Margaret Byrne Professor of American History at Stanford
University, a faculty co-director of the Bill Lane Center for the American West and the former President
of the Organization of American Historians. Professor White is a MacArthur Fellow and a Mellon
Distinguished Professor.
Moderators
STEPHEN ARON is a Professor of History at UCLA, chair of western history at the Autry Institute for the
Study of the American West, and the Peter and Margaret D'Angelo Visiting Chair in the Humanities at St.
John's University for 2015.
JESSICA CATTELINO is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at UCLA. She also holds affiliate
appointments in American Indian Studies and Gender Studies. She studies sociocultural life in the
contemporary United States including nature and indigenous people. Her book High Stakes: Florida
Seminole Gaming and Sovereignty was winner of the Delmos Jones and Jagna Sharff Memorial Book
Prize
URSULA K. HEISE is a Professor of English at UCLA and a faculty member of UCLA’s Institute of the
Environment and Sustainability (IoES). Her research and teaching focus on contemporary environmental
culture, literature and art in the Americas, Western Europe and Japan; theories of globalization;
literature and science; and the digital humanities.
ERIC SHEPPARD is the Alexander von Humboldt Professor of Geography at UCLA. His interests span
issues of environmental justice, environment and development and urban sustainability policies and
practices in Asia and the US.
Panelists
PETER S. ALAGONA is an associate professor of history, geography, and environmental studies at
University of California, Santa Barbara, and the author of After the Grizzly: Endangered Species and the
Politics of Place in California.
JARED DAHL ALDERN is a California historical ecologist and educator. His research and curriculum
development focus on fire ecology, meadow restoration, and how indigenous narrative expresses
environmental jurisdiction. He has taught history at San Diego State, Stanford, and other institutions.
RUTH ASKEVOLD uses historical maps and photographs to help visualize past landscapes at the San
Francisco Estuary Institute, where she manages the Resilient Landscapes Program.
NOA BATLE is an artist, born and raised in San Francisco. His work has been exhibited at SFMOMA Artist
Gallery and New York MOMA PS1. He is an entering freshman at UCLA’s School of Art and Architecture.
WILLIAM BAUER is an associate professor of history at University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and the author
of “We Were All Like Migrant Workers Here”: Work, Community and Memory on California’s Round
Valley Reservation, 1850–1941. His current research focuses on the oral traditions of California Indians.
ERIN BELLER is an environmental scientist with the San Francisco Estuary Institute, where she leads
research on historical ecological landscapes and landscape change across California.
BARRON BIXLER is a photographer whose work explores marginal landscapes and communities,
vernacular architecture, and built environments. His recent projects include “A New Pastoral: Views of
the San Joaquin Valley,” “L.A. Environs,” and “Industrial Materials: Mining and Refining California.”
CAROLYN FINNEY is an assistant professor of environmental science, policy, and management at the
University of California, Berkeley. She serves on the National Parks Advisory Board and is a member of
California’s Parks Forward Commission.
ROBIN GROSSINGER is a senior scientist at the San Francisco Estuary Institute, where he directs the
Resilient Landscapes Program. He is the author of the Napa Valley Historical Ecology Atlas.
MARY ELLEN HANNIBAL is a Bay Area writer and editor focusing on science and culture. Her book The
Spine of the Continent is about a social, geographical, and scientific effort to save nature along the Rocky
Mountains.
EMILY HARTOP is an assistant collections manager in entomology and BioSCAN staff member at the
Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County.
LILA HIGGINS is a museum educator with a background in environmental education and entomology.
She is currently the manager of citizen science at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County.
PIERRETTE HONDAGNEU-SOTELO is a professor of sociology and an associate director of the Center for
the Study of Immigrant Integration at the University of Southern California. She is the author or editor of
nine books, the most recent of which is Paradise Transplanted: Migration and the Making of California
Gardens.
LUKE JAFFAR is an artist, pursuing a degree in Art at UCLA’s School of the Arts and Architecture. He
recently graduated from Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts with an interest in sculpture and
drawing. His artworks draw directly from his experiences in his neighborhood.
TROY JOLLIMORE is a poet, literary critic, and professor of philosophy at California State University,
Chico. His poems have appeared in the New Yorker, McSweeney’s, the Believer, and other publications.
GLEN M. MacDONALD holds the John Muir Memorial Chair and is a distinguished professor of
geography, ecology, and evolutionary biology, and in the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability
at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is the author of Biogeography: Space, Time and Life. His
research focuses on climatic and environmental change.
RUE MAPP is the CEO and founder of Outdoor Afro, a social community that reconnects African
Americans with natural spaces and one another through recreational activities such as camping, hiking,
biking, birding, fishing, and gardening.
JAMES EDWARD MILLS is a freelance journalist, photographer, and independent media producer. He is
creator of the website and podcast series The Joy Trip Project.
BETH PRATT is the California Director for the National Wildlife Federation and has worked in
environmental leadership roles for over twenty years, and in two of the country’s largest national parks:
Yosemite and Yellowstone. Her upcoming book, When Mountain Lions are Neighbors: Wildlife in Today’s
California, will be published by Heyday in late 2015.
RAFE SAGARIN is a marine ecologist at the University of Arizona’s Biosphere 2, where he is leading a
new project to create a living model of the Gulf of California. He is the author of Learning from the
Octopus: How Secrets from Nature Can Help Us Fight Terrorism, Natural Disasters, and
Disease and Observation and Ecology: Broadening the Scope of Science to Understand a Complex World.
AMY SCOTT is the chief curator and Marilyn B. and Calvin B. Gross Curator of Visual Arts at the Autry
National Center of the American West.
H. BRADLEY SHAFFER is a distinguished professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University
of California, Los Angeles, and director of the La Kretz Center for California Conservation Science, a part
of the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability.
DAVID SZYMANSKI is the superintendent of Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, a unit of
the National Park Service. He has 14 years of experience with the National Park Service. Szymanski
studied engineering at the University of Michigan where a class on the literature of the American
wilderness altered his goals. Szymanski subsequently began his current career path serving two years
with the Peace Corps in the newly established national park system of Madagascar.
BARBARA THOMASON is a Los Angeles–based painter, and she teaches printmaking, sculpture, and
painting at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona.
D.J. WALDIE is an essayist and author of several books, including Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir.He is a
contributing writer to Los Angeles magazine and a contributing editor to the Los Angeles Times.
BYRON WOLFE is an associate professor and program director of photography at the Tyler School of Art
at Temple University, and was previously at California State University, Chico. His work is widely
published and can be found in the collections at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the
Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, among other institutions.
TERENCE YOUNG is a professor of geography at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona and the
author of Building San Francisco’s Parks, 1850–1930. His new book, Heading Out: American Camping
Since 1869, will be published in 2015.