The Passing of Doc Hamilton

 We are sad to share the news that Dr. Bruce "Doc" Hamilton has passed away. He was a fixture on the faculty in the Rutgers Department of Landscape Architecture and the various permutations of Cook College. He was the Director of Rutgers Gardens, moving it towards a larger goal of serving the state as a university public garden while lovingly pruning, mowing, and planting as much he could possibly take on himself. He is remembered with the Hamilton Award, the university’s national horticulture recognition that bears his name.   

For years we had offices across the hall from one another and had countless of those end-of-the-day moments that ranged from touching to humorous. But the real treat was going on field trips with him, from Boston to Washington DC. Revisiting Dumbarton Oaks with him was a revelation and discovering newly built parks in Boston broadened my first look at them. 

Mapping COVID attitudes

 Check out this fascinating map of Covid on Campus: Instructor Reports by Hannah Alpert-Abrams.

Variants

Stay alert. There is still so much we don't know. The Danes have great data (lots of genome sequencing) and say that the Alpha variant is to be taken seriously. And the concern about Delta in schools seems worth watching.

 

Indigenous mapping conference

Save the Date: 3rd Ruderman Conference, October 20-22, 2021

The third biennial Barry Lawrence Ruderman Conference on Cartography will focus on the theme of Indigenous mapping. The conference, to be held digitally, is hosted by the David Rumsey Map Center at Stanford Libraries, which sits on the ancestral land of the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe. It is sponsored and co-organized by Barry Lawrence Ruderman Antique Maps Inc., whose shop is located on the ancestral land of the Kumeyaay peoples.

This theme is of paramount importance, especially as Indigenous peoples around the world continue to fight for their recognition and rights to land and resources. Simultaneously, institutions are increasingly examining their roles in exploitative imperial expansion and settler colonialism. The history of colonial encounter and of indigenous agency can both be glimpsed in historical maps, many of which were made by Indigenous peoples or thanks to crucial, and often unacknowledged, Indigenous contributions. More recently, mapping technologies are helping Indigenous groups to monitor resources, protect language, survey territory, govern, and provide evidence for reclamation and recognition procedures. Scholars, many of them Indigenous, are voicing their critiques and interventions using geographic and cartographic frameworks.

All of these interpretations of Indigenous maps and mapping will be highlighted at the conference, held October 20-22, 2021. Each day of the conference will have a keynote, followed by panels that speak to a specific strain of scholarship: history of Indigenous maps and mapping, critical approaches to Indigenous geography, and digital applications. Our keynotes will be Alex Hidalgo (Texas Christian University), Mishuana Goeman (UCLA), and Eric Anderson and Carrie Cornelius (Haskell Indian Nations University). The conference will offer new insights into the ways in which maps and mapping are used by and have affected Indigenous peoples globally. Together, the three days of the conference hope to highlight exciting research, showcase a variety of maps and mapping practices, and to explore the thrust of this important field of study.

https://library.stanford.edu/rumsey/public-events/barry-lawrence-ruderman-conference-cartography