The Final Frontier: Mythologies of Outer Space (2022)
Exploring ideas about space exploration, travel and colonization, and the development of the technologies that will take us there.
The Calgary Institute for the Humanities 41st Annual Community Seminar
One of the most enduring lines in popular culture describes outer space as the “final frontier.” This metaphor, which is intended to be optimistic and idealistic, is nonetheless revealing about how our thinking about space travel has always been rooted in more earth-bound matters: in this case, the idea that outer space is like the early American west, a largely empty place waiting for European-style settlement. The CIH 2022 Annual Community Seminar explored some of the ideas that have shaped the way we have thought about space exploration, travel and colonization, and the development of the technologies that have brought us there. Our panelists looked at such things as the ethics of terraforming (making planets habitable for humans), the political status of extraterrestrial sites, and the history of the earthly sites chosen for rocket testing, space training and the placement of telescopes. The day featured a panel of international guest speakers, a short film screening, poetry reading, and lunch and conversation with the community.
Watch the CIH 2022 Annual Community Forum
Alice Gorman, PhD
Associate Professor
College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences
Flinders University
Alice Gorman is an internationally recognised leader in the field of space archaeology. Her research on space exploration has been featured in National Geographic, New Scientist, and Archaeology magazine and her book Dr Space Junk vs the Universe: Archaeology and the Future (2019) won the NIB Award People's Choice and the John Mulvaney Book Award. She is a faculty member of the International Space University's Southern Hemisphere Space Program in Adelaide. She has worked extensively in Indigenous heritage management, providing advice for mining industry, urban development, government departments, local councils and Native Title groups in NSW, WA, SA and Queensland. She is also a specialist in stone tool analysis, and the Aboriginal use of bottle glass after European settlement.
Hilding Neilson, PhD
Assistant Professor
David A. Dunlap Dept of Astronomy & Astrophysics
University of Toronto
Hilding Neilson is an interdisciplinary scientist, working on astrophysics and on the intersection of science, astronomy, and Indigenous knowledge. As a Mi’kmaw person, he strives to embrace and integrate Indigenous knowledges and methodologies to better understand the physics of stars and the Universe and our place in it. More specifically, he probes the physics of stars, from the nuclear-burning core out to the circumstellar medium where stellar winds interact with the interstellar medium to understand connections between stars and planets; stars and cosmology; and stars and us. He exploits theoretical and numerical tools to compare with observational data sets to reveal the hidden physics of stars.
Chris Pak, PhD
Lecturer
Department of English
Swansea University
Chris Pak specialises in the study of Science Fiction and was an Arthur C. Clarke award judge from 2018-2020. He is the author of Terraforming: Ecopolitical Transformations and Environmentalism in Science Fiction (Liverpool University Press, 2016), and is especially interested in the ecological and environmental significance of stories of terraforming and pantropy - the modification of other planets and the modification of bodies to enable the habitation of otherwise uninhabitable environments, respectively.
Featured Art
Poetry readings from "Stellar Sequence"
Kyle Flemmer is an author, editor, and publisher from Calgary in Treaty 7 territory. He studies digital poetics at the University of Calgary where he is a teaching and research assistant. Kyle founded the Blasted Tree Publishing Co. in 2014 and is a former managing editor of filling Station magazine. Kyle read poems from his series "Stellar Sequence."
Screening of Afronauts (2014)
Set in July, 1969 as America is preparing to launch Apollo 11, the Zambia Space Academy hopes to beat America to the Moon. Inspired by true events. Afronauts Writer and director Nuotama Frances Bodomo is a Ghanaian filmmaker based in New York City. Her award-winning short films have played at festivals including Sundance, The Berlinale, Telluride, Rotterdam, and SXSW.