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Curating the End of the World: Nationalizing Natural History in Tierra del Fuego, Argentina
19 November 2019, 6:00 pm–8:00 pm
IHR Latin American History Seminar.
This event is free.
Event Information
Open to
- All
Availability
- Yes
Cost
- Free
Organiser
-
Oscar Martinez
Location
-
105Institute of the Americas51 Gordon SquareLondonWC1H 0PNUnited Kingdom
This paper traces the cultural and social transformation of Tierra del Fuego from a supposed natural prison to a celebrated national park. With the closing of the Ushuaia penal colony in 1947, developers and officials employed a strategy of selective national memory to render the prison a “parenthesis” in a deeper Argentine history of natural beauty. The prison itself was converted to a museum in 1997, on the fiftieth anniversary of its closure, and the train used by inmates to fell timber was refurbished for tourist expeditions into Tierra del Fuego National Park. The paper reveals the tensions between green and dark tourisms—the national park versus the prison museum—linked by the train, and how together they curate a nationalized natural history.
About the Speaker
Ryan C. Edwards
Ryan C. Edwards is a Visiting Professor and Associate Research Scholar at Princeton University. His current work explores the intersection of environmental history and carceral geography. Edwards' research has been funded by Fulbright Argentina and the Social Science Research Council, and his publications have appeared in The Appendix, the Hispanic American Historical Review, and the Journal of Historical Geography.