Lecture | Blue History Network Graduate Forum
Water frontiers
- Date
- Tuesday 31 March 2026
- Time
- Address
-
Johan Huizinga
Doelensteeg 16
2311 VL Leiden - Room
- Conference room 2.60
Join a series of seminars putting water at the center of (historical) analysis! Explore new topics and perspectives within broader themes in this rapidly emerging field. Open to all scholars and students
interested in the blue humanities.
Water frontiers
Throughout history, water has challenged the limits of human imagination. From coastal networks to imperial expeditions, the presence of water has fueled enterprise and development, inspiring maritime exploration, scientific progress, and colonial expansion.
This seminar, inspired by the work of Helen Rozwadowski, will consider water as a frontier in the broadest sense of the word. Perceived as a limitless expanse of endless possibility, but also as a commodity to be harnessed, the legacies of ambitious projects to chart, circumnavigate, and control bodies of water continue into the present. Though often framed within discourses of prosperity, civilization, and development, the reality of human interactions with this "frontier" is far more complex, inspiring atrocities as well as advances. Rather than viewing it as a static backdrop to developments within histories of imperialism, science, and discovery, this seminar restores water to the center of these stories.
Suggested works:
- Igler, David. 2013. The Great Ocean : Pacific Worlds from Captain Cook to the Gold Rush. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Macauley, Melissa. 2021. Distant Shores : Colonial Encounters on China’s Maritime Frontier. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
- Mustakeem, Sowande’ M. 2016. Slavery at Sea : Terror, Sex, and Sickness in the Middle Passage. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
- Rozwadowski, Helen M. 2018. Vast Expanses: A History of the Oceans. London: Reaktion Books, Limited.
- Teisch, Jessica B. 2011. Engineering Nature : Water, Development, and the Global Spread of American Environmental Expertise. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Blue History Network Graduate Forum
The Blue History Network Graduate Forum is a series of seminars on topics related to blue history, inviting scholars to join an ongoing conversation on key themes within this rapidly emerging field. The fluidity of water as a shared point of reference facilitates new connections and insightful discussions across traditional disciplinary boundaries, and the Graduate Forum aims to incorporate a broad range of perspectives and engage a wider audience. Each session will have an overarching theme and some suggested starting points, but participants are warmly encouraged to draw connections to their own research and interests during the discussions. The Graduate Forum will be hosted at Leiden University, with the option to attend online, and is open to all scholars interested in blue history, whether to share and deepen existing expertise or explore exciting new ways of conceptualizing and working with history.
