June 25, 2010: ISER offers a lunchtime talk on Arctic nations' sovereignty

Friday, June 25, Noon-1 p.m.
Diplomacy Building, fifth floor conference room

The topic for the talk is "Flows and Floes: Mobility, Materiality, and Sovereignty in the Arctic."

Phil Steinberg, Jeremy Tasch and Mauro Caraccioli will discuss the perspectives guiding their research project, "Territorial Imaginaries and Arctic Sovereignty Claims," as well as preliminary findings from the component of the study focused on U.S. and Canadian positions regarding the juridical status of the Northwest Passage. The research, a collaborative project encompassing three universities in the U.S. and one in Canada, seeks to interpret how polar policy across the five Arctic Ocean littoral states is guided by conceptions of the region's physical composition as well as its place in specific ideals of nationhood.

Phil Steinberg is a professor in the Department of Geography at Florida State University and the author of five books on topics ranging from marine governance to urban reconstruction. He has published on northern topics in journals including Political Geography, Island Studies Journal, and the Annals of the Association of American Geographers. Jeremy Tasch (formerly of UAA's Department of Geography) is assistant professor in the Department of Geography and Environmental Planning at Towson University and an expert on resource governance and development policy in the former Soviet Union. Mauro Caraccioli is a doctoral student in the Department of Geography at Florida State University with an expertise in the intersection between perceptions of place and international relations policy.