The Conversation Project: Life in Bangladesh

Rickshaw in Bangladesh

The Conversation Project, presented by Oregon Humanities, continues on Wednesday, March 31, with a conversation on “Life in a Mega City: Images of Urban Bangladesh.” This conversation will be presented by photographer Geoffrey Hiller for free from 6:30-8:00  p.m. in the Library’s Oak Room.

About the Conversation:

Bangladesh, which is the size of Wisconsin, is home to more than 150 million inhabitants, including 15 million in the capital city of Dhaka alone. The country is also the fifth- largest exporter to the U.S. of ready-made garments, which are made by a largely female workforce whose hourly wages are lower than those in China, India, Indonesia, or Mexico. Considered one of twenty-two mega cities in the world, Dhaka continues to reinvent itself on a weekly basis as new industries spring up and rural citizens flock to the city for jobs and opportunities.

Through slides, videos, and stories, photojournalist and Fulbright Scholar Geoffrey Hiller will lead a conversation about the reasons for and challenges associated with the growth of mega cities, the differences between Bangladeshi and American culture, and the connections between our consumer choices and a global work force.

About the presenter:

Geoffrey Hiller’s photography has been published in the United States, Europe, and Japan in such publications as Geo, Newsweek, Mother Jones, and The New York Times Magazine. His photo-essays have covered Asia, Latin America, Europe, and West Africa. He was on the staff of the Brazilian edition of National Geographic for two years. Hiller’s award-winning multimedia projects about Vietnam, eastern Europe, Ghana, Burma, and Brazil have earned recognition from Adobe, the Soros Foundation, Apple, The Christian Science Monitor, and USA Today. He has also developed web projects for Tektronix, Xerox, Canon, and the National Press Photographers Association. Hiller was a Fulbright Scholar between 2008 and 2009, photographing and teaching interactive media in Dhaka, Bangladesh. He maintains two blogs: www.banglaphoto.wordpress.com, about his work in Bangladesh, and www.vervephoto.wordpress.com, where he edits the work of contemporary documentary photographers.

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The Conversation Project: A New Chautauqua offers free programs that engage community members in thoughtful, challenging conversations about ideas critical to our daily lives and our state’s future. Conversations are facilitated by some of Oregon’s most respected humanities scholars.

For more information, contact John Smith at 503-570-1594.

The Conversation Project: Your Land, My Land

Prof. Veronica Dujon

The Conversation Project, presented by Oregon Humanities, continues on Wednesday, March 3, with a conversation on “Your Land, My Land: Using and Preserving Oregon’s Natural Resources”. This conversation will be presented by Portland State University Professor Veronica Dujon for free from 6:30-8:00  p.m. in the Library’s Oak Room.

About the conversation:

Oregonians are known for a fierce sense of independence and a rugged individuality, qualities long associated with natural resource vocations such as logging, fishing, farming, and ranching. The state is also known for its progressive environmental policies. Our sense of connection to a place informs our values and our approaches to conflict over resource and land use in our communities.

Veronica Dujon, whose research focuses on gillnet fishermen on the Lower Columbia and the conflict over water rights in the Klamath Basin, invites you to consider the various meanings we in Oregon have come to attach to different places in the state and to explore how these attachments shape our desire to both use and preserve our natural resources.

About the presenter:

Veronica Dujon is professor and chair of the department of sociology at Portland State University. She teaches, researches, and publishes in the areas of environmental sociology with a focus on contests over declining natural resources, sociology of globalization, and women in the global economy. One of her major research interests is how to build socially sustainable societies. She has published widely and is co-editor of the volume Understanding the Social Dimension of Sustainability (Routledge, 2009). In Oregon, her research focuses on the conflict over water rights in the Klamath Basin and the adaptation strategies of gillnet fishermen on the Lower Columbia as they respond to declining salmon runs. Dujon received her bachelor’s degree from the University of the West Indies, Barbados, and her master’s and doctoral degrees in land resources/sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

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The Conversation Project: A New Chautauqua offers free programs that engage community members in thoughtful, challenging conversations about ideas critical to our daily lives and our state’s future. Conversations are facilitated by some of Oregon’s most respected humanities scholars.

For more information, contact John Smith at 503-570-1594.

The Conversation Project: Portrait of Life in Iraq

The Conversation Project, presented by Oregon Humanities, continues on Wednesday, February 10, with a conversation on “Night of a Thousand Stars: Portrait of Life in Iraq.” This conversation will be presented by photojournalist Joel Preston Smith for free from 6:30-8:00  p.m. in the Library’s Oak Room.

About the conversation:

Photojournalist Joel Preston Smith traveled in central and northern Iraq for four months in 2003, living with Iraqis and Kurds and patrolling with U.S. soldiers. This slide show and conversation offer a comprehensive portrait of Iraqi society before and after the U.S. invasion in 2003, as seen from the perspectives of both Iraqis and U.S. soldiers. Smith will lead audiences in a conversation about the ethics of war, media bias, and American perceptions of Iraqis and Middle Easterners.

About the presenter:

Joel Preston Smith is a freelance writer, photographer, and artist based in Portland. Born in Liberty, West Virginia, Smith has served as a photojournalist in the U.S. Army and as a civilian on humanitarian aid missions to Rwanda, Honduras, Palestine, and Iraq. His work has been published in Gobshite Quarterly, The Irish Times, The Oregonian, and others. He is also the author of a book of essays and photographs, Night of a Thousand Stars and Other Portraits of Iraq (Nazraeli Press, 2006).

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The Conversation Project: A New Chautauqua offers free programs that engage community members in thoughtful, challenging conversations about ideas critical to our daily lives and our state’s future. Conversations are facilitated by some of Oregon’s most respected humanities scholars.

For more information, contact John Smith at 503-570-1594.