The Raven and the Sea

 

Sarah Rivett, professor of English and American studies, presented “The Raven and the Sea.” Rivett was the final speaker in the fall 2024 HMEI Faculty Seminar Series.

Early ornithology organized itself around a binary of land birds and sea birds. This talk follows the journey of one bird in particular, the raven who is relegated to barren patches of land. In contrast, in Northwestern Pacific Indigenous traditions, ravens move seamlessly through intertidal zones characterized by the porous boundary of land and sea. The figure of the raven in the Indigenous Pacific West exposes the epistemological limits of European and Anglo-American ornithology to comprehend intertidal ecologies, which are by definition liminal, malleable, impermanent and therefore resistant to Western-colonial categories of knowledge.

Image courtesy of the Princeton University Art Museum.

The Raven and the Sea

Publish Date

December 3, 2024

Presenter(s)

Sarah Rivett

Link to Video

https://youtu.be/wgJ6cm4oKBU

Video Length

55:28

 

Sarah Rivett, professor of English and American studies, presented “The Raven and the Sea.” Rivett was the final speaker in the fall 2024 HMEI Faculty Seminar Series.

Early ornithology organized itself around a binary of land birds and sea birds. This talk follows the journey of one bird in particular, the raven who is relegated to barren patches of land. In contrast, in Northwestern Pacific Indigenous traditions, ravens move seamlessly through intertidal zones characterized by the porous boundary of land and sea. The figure of the raven in the Indigenous Pacific West exposes the epistemological limits of European and Anglo-American ornithology to comprehend intertidal ecologies, which are by definition liminal, malleable, impermanent and therefore resistant to Western-colonial categories of knowledge.

Image courtesy of the Princeton University Art Museum.