History Department

The great age of discovery took place in the 15th and 16th centuries when the discovery of routes between oceans shifted human activity from a regional scale towards globalization.  The second discovery in the mid-to late 19th century with the increasing cultural and scientific importance of the sea drew new kinds of people to the seashore and out to sea, including writers, middle class families with children, amateur naturalists, artists and tourists, Dr. Rozwadowski argues that we might be in the midst of a third discovery of the sea, central to wihch is the rediscovery of the ocean as a profoundly historical place rather than a timeless one.  The third discovery involves a growing appreciation of the inextricable relationship between people and oceans that is prompted by the observed and anticipated effect on the ocean of over fishing and global climate change.  Articulating this third discovery of the sea reveals a role for the humanities, and particularly for the history of science, in comprehending how knowledge about nature enables its use and indeed its misuse, on a planet where the oceans are central rather than peripheral.

Helen M. Rozwadowski is an Associate Professor of History and Maritime Studies at the University of Connecticut, teaching mainly at the University's marine and maritime campus, Avery Point.  Her book, Fathoming the Ocean: The Discovery and Exploration of the Deep Sea (2005), won the History of Science Society's Davis Prize for best book directed to a wide public audience. She has written a history of 20th century marine science, The Sea Knows No Boundaries (2002), and co-edited two volumes, The Machine in Neptune's Garden: Perspectives on Techoology and the Marine Environment (2004) and Extremes: Oceanography's Adventures at the Poles (2007).  She is currently working on a cultural history of the ocean from prehistory to the present, and is also working on a project studying undersea exploration in the 1950s and 1960s tenatively titled "Always the Last Frontier."

Arts on Oceans Distinguished lecture: "Third Discovery of the Sea?" Wednesday, September 9 7:30 p.m. in Rm. 2001 Bruneau Innovation Theatre.  Arts on Oceans/MSRU seminar: "The Blue Frontier" Thursday, September 10, 12 noon in SN 2000.