The Biological Archive: A History of Philippine Mollusks In and Out of the Ocean

The Department of History and the Department of Environmental Science invite you to

The Biological Archive: A History of Philippine Mollusks In and Out of the Ocean

a lecture by Dr. Anthony D. Medrano

November 8, 2022, 5:00PM - 6:30PM

Social Science Case Study Room and via Zoom

Online Participants may register here: https://ateneo-edu.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJYtfuuspjoiGtVpJaq0LgdZauadrDhpuMJ9 

Lecture Abstract:
This paper uses a history of Philippine mollusks to show how shells, pearls, and beds can serve as a biological archive for writing new stories about the prewar origins of today's Coral Triangle. In doing so, it follows the life of Philippine mollusks across a century (1830s-1930s) of collection-building, knowledge-making, and world-forming. From Hugh Cuming (1791-1865) and Joaquín González Hidalgo (1839-1923) to Sultan Hadji Kiram II (1884-1936) and Leopoldo Faustino (1892-1935), it braids together a genealogy that connects the overseas empire of museums and markets to the underwater ecology of organisms and beds. By thinking with mollusks past and present, the paper thus contributes to recovering one of the ways in which today's Coral Triangle came to be.  

About the Lecturer:

Anthony D. Medrano is the National University of Singapore (NUS) Presidential Young Professor of Environmental Studies at Yale-NUS College with a joint appointment in NUS's Department of History. His teaching and scholarship focus on the histories and intersections of economic life and biodiversity change in Southeast Asia. He's completing a monograph titled The Edible Ocean: Science, Industry, and the Rise of Urban Southeast Asia (under contract with Yale University Press), co-editing (with Nicole Aboitiz CuUnjieng, University of Cambridge) a special issue titled "Returning to the Region: Philippine History and the Contingencies of Southeast Asia" for the Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, and is editor of La-la Land: Singapore's Seafood Heritage (Epigram Books, expected in 2023). His interest in Philippine mollusks forms part of a new project about the history and heritage of the Coral Triangle.