Guaraní Resistance and Deforestation, 1500-2021: A Digital Mapping Project

Our June seminar saw our community gather to hear about “Digital mapping project on Guaraní Resistance and Deforestation, 1500-2021″. Details below.

Register here.

Title: Guaraní Resistance and Deforestation, 1500-2021: A Digital Mapping Project

When: Thursday, 16 June 2022, 3:30 pm – 4:30 pm AEST

Speaker: Freg J Stokes

Format: 30 minute presentation & 30 minute open discussion via Zoom

Abstract: Via a series of maps, this talk demonstrates how Guaraní resistance in the Atlantic Rainforest of South America impeded deforestation between 1501 and 2021. Over the long term, the Portuguese appropriation of Indigenous and African labour on commodity frontiers in the coastal section of the Atlantic Rainforest, coupled with investment from international capital, drove large-scale clearing. In stark contrast, Guaraní resistance against both Portuguese and Spanish colonisation within the inland forest prevented capital accumulation and deforestation in that region until the late twentieth century.

About the speaker: Freg is a writer and mapmaker from Melbourne, Australia. He is a PhD candidate in History at the University of Melbourne. His doctoral thesis provides part of the research basis for The Hummingbird’s Atlas, a collaborative project with Guaraní artists and writers. He has written for the Postcolonial Studies Journal, Jacobin, Crikey, Overland and The Lifted Brow.

HADES Seminar Series: Humanities in the Digital Age
From the Humanities and Diverse eResearch Scholars group (HADES), this series brings together a wide range of interdisciplinary research at the intersection of Humanities and digital scholarship. We will hear from speakers on topics ranging from digital ethics and machine learning through to architecture and literary studies, but always with a focus on the crucial role that the Humanities play in helping to explain and shape complex human experiences. The series aims to challenge and extend understandings of digital research in the Humanities and present new and emerging work by scholars working across and between disciplines.

Seminars will usually be held monthly on the third Thursday of every month at 3:30pm.