Heritage matters to community health. The COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, divisive politics, and other stresses threaten our health, physical and mental. One avenue for resilience comes from reflecting on the values, culture, and history of a community: heritage. Professor Uzi Baram will share insights on the intersection of heritage and health globally and locally, giving particular attention to the paradox of threats from rising sea levels and the calmness of the blue mind. The wonders of the waters for health, across generations, are centered in the conversation.

Uzi Baram’s research and teaching focuses on race and ethnicity, colonialism, and the intersections of archaeology and heritage. Areas of research include the eastern Mediterranean and the Florida Gulf Coast. Publications include A Historical Archaeology of the Ottoman Empire: Breaking New Ground, Marketing Heritage: Archaeology and the Consumption of the Past, Cosmopolitanism and Ethnogenesis, Colonialism and Resistance: Themes in the Historical Archaeology of Florida, and Heritage as Social Action: Sarasota/Manatee in an Age of Rising Sea Levels. Current research includes the archaeology of an early 19th-century freedom-seeking community on the Florida Gulf Coast, intersections of archaeology, heritage, and anti-racism, and climate change as future-oriented possibilities for Anthropocene landscapes. Professor Baram is committed to civic engagement and, as Director of the New College Public Archaeology Lab, has led a robust program of public presentations and community-based archaeology projects.

Support for this event was made possible by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.