On the sea and coastal ecologies: early modern pasts and uncertain futures

Lyle Massey
Art History
UC Irvine

Tiffany Jo Werth
English
UC Davis

Bronwen Wilson
Art History
UC Los Angeles

Participants

The landing of Sir Francis Drake in 1579 on the coast, as he claimed in Nova Albion, near present day Bodega Bay, provides a critical and local instance of the charged symbolic weight of the sea—of its human and more-than-human creative and destructive forces. Ancient and medieval perceptions of the sea as both a fearsome place and also a medium for the acquisition of resources and conquest persisted in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries with rapid, global, and unprecedented maritime expansion. Oceans generated increasingly more complex networks of communication, technologies, and wealth, resulting in colonial encounters with what became subjugated peoples, and exportation of enslaved human capital to exploit natural resources. Sea travel led to scientific discoveries, to experiments in navigation and cartography, and to management and collection of newly discovered resources. Europeans also were required to navigate their relationship to the sea at home. While the effects of sea-level rise are integral to current day discussions of climate change, early moderns, importantly, were engaged in multiple efforts to manage and contain the tenuous relationship between land and sea, especially along the coasts. Exploring material, visual, and literary engagement with these themes, early modern scholars are working with marine scientists and local communities to develop modes of describing artifacts that are attentive to the distinctive flows, forces, and temporal dimensions of the sea.

Sea is also the second in a trilogy of international events. In 2019, our Principal Investigators participated in Earth, sponsored by Oxford University. The UC-based members are planning 2020/21 devoted to Sea. Finally, the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, will host events on Sky (2022).

Image: Water, Adriaen Collaert, after Maerten de Vos, 1580 – 1584. Hand-colored engraving.
https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/collection/RP-P-BI-6065