Rise of the Eco-Comics: How the Maritime Governments Helped Shape Environmental Education

Friday, September 25, 2020 at 9 AM
Join St. Thomas University’s Environmental Praxis Class (ENVS 3023) every other Friday morning at 9:00am ADT (8:00am EST) this fall for an online interdisciplinary lecture series on environmental issues facing New Brunswick and beyond. Hear critical perspectives from thinkers from various disciplines, artists and activists on today’s pressing environmental issues.
On Friday, Sept. 25 at 9:00am ADT (8:00am EST), Mark McLaughlin will speak on “Rise of the Eco-Comics: How the Maritime Governments Helped Shape Environmental Education.”
Register for the Zoom link at tglynn@stu.ca.
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 will focus 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 will argue 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.
Dr. Mark McLaughlin is an assistant professor of history and Canadian studies at the University of Maine. Dr. McLaughlin’s research has focused on forestry and natural resource management, particularly the notions of forests as contested spaces and the state as mediator between various user groups competing for access to public resources.
This lecture 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. The NB Media Co-op will record and publish some of these lectures on their website.
Upcoming lectures:
  • Oct. 9 – Sabine LeBel, Professor of Culture and Media Studies, University of New Brunswick, on the Queering Environmental Futures project.
  • 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 more information, contact Tracy at tglynn@stu.ca.

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