Dr. Helen M. Rozwadowski of the University of Connecticut will speak on "Third Discovery of the Sea? A Central Role for Humanities."

Historian J. H. Parry proposed that the so-called “great age of discovery” of the 15th and 16th centuries yielded knowledge about the sea routes between the new lands located in this era.  Recently, cultural historians point to a second discovery of the sea in the mid-to-late 19th century, which began with a newfound appreciation for the open ocean and its depths and rendered the ocean, for the first time in history, as a destination rather than a highway. Dr. Rozwadowski argues that we may be in the midst of a third discovery of the sea, central to which is the rediscovery of the ocean as a profoundly historical place rather than a timeless one. This third discovery also involves a growing appreciation of the inextricable relationship between people and oceans that is prompted by the observed and anticipated effects on the ocean of overfishing and global climate change.