Mark McLaughlin on the rise of eco-comics and how the Maritime governments helped shaped environmental education [video]

Dr. Mark McLaughlin, an Assistant Professor of History and Canadian Studies at the University of Maine, delivered the talk, “The Rise of Eco-Comics: How the Maritime Governments Helped Shape Environmental Education” on September 25, 2020 by Zoom.

Part of St. Thomas University’s Environmental Praxis Lecture Series, this talk is supported by the NB Media Co-op and RAVEN – Rural Action and Voices for the Environment, a research project based at the University of New Brunswick.

According to McLaughlin, “In the 1960s and 1970s, environmental education emerged as a formal educational approach alongside the growth of the modern environmental movement. Touted by many as an effective means to inform citizenries about environmental problems and solutions, environmental education programs were frequently more than noble-minded policies and projects. Government officials in Canada were not against using such programs to foster within citizenries particular types of environmental knowledge, awareness, and motivations deemed useful by the state.”

In his lecture, Dr. Mark McLaughlin focused on the environmental education program developed by the Maritime governments in the early 1970s to shed light on the nuances often present in state-sponsored environmental messaging.

With a focus on the comic book Captain Enviro (1972), Dr. McLaughlin argued that “the Maritime program was a particularly early example of the type of environmental messaging that was prevalent in the 1990s and onwards, where individual actions regularly took precedence over society-wide solutions.”

Upcoming lectures:

Oct. 9 – Sabine LeBel, Professor of Culture and Media Studies, University of New Brunswick, on queering art education for the environment.

Oct. 23 – Bob Bancroft, Nova Scotia wildlife biologist and CBC radio personality, on the Acadian forest and what is lost in the conversion of forests to plantations.

Nov. 6 – Daniel Tubb, Professor of Anthropology, University of New Brunswick, on his new book, Shifting Livelihoods: Gold Mining and Subsistence in the Chocó, Colombia.

Nov. 20 – Valerie Lannon, climate activist and co-author of Indigenous Sovereignty and Socialism, and David Bush, York Ph.D. student, labour organizer and editor of Rank and File and Spring, on the Green New Deal and the socialist case against the carbon tax.

For the Zoom link or for more information, contact: info@nbmedicoop.org.