June 13
I’ll be speaking to the Western Australian Naturalists Club on changing cultural views of the natural world in Western Australia 9 July, 7pm. Members of the public are welcome to join.
More information is here.
May 6
Two sessions: Friday 11 & Monday 14 June, 9.30 – 11.30am
Humans have been telling stories about nature for millennia. We look at some of the most significant and imaginatively compelling books that do just this, in poetry, fiction and nonfiction. Discover, or re-discover, works of Wordsworth, Thoreau and Powers, and the poetry of Wang Wei, Mary Oliver and others.
Location: 42 Glyde St. East Fremantle // Members $24 / $16 conc. Enrol here.
(The above image is an excerpt I’ve taken from ‘Home by the Lake’ by the Hudson School artist Frederic Edwin Church from 1852. I’ll be touching on the American essayist Thoreau in my talks and Church’s painting of a wooden cabin alongside a lake in New England was made around the same time that Thoreau immortalised such a vision in Walden – 1854.)
December 23
Every 2nd Wednesday // 1pm – 2pm // 3 March to 12 May
Location: Wanneroo Library
Rewilding the landscape means returning some of the plants and animals indigenous to a place to their home. But what might ‘rewilding’ ourselves mean? In this course we’ll look at a selection of authors who have thought about how modern life in the Western world has made us isolated, physically inactive, and obsessed with owning the earth. We will learn, by turning to history and anthropology, how we might become more connected to our home places, more physically engaged, and ultimately, happier people. In the final week of the course we will consider the case of Bruno Manser, a Swiss-German man who lived with the Penan hunter-gatherers of the Borneo rainforest for several years in the 1990s.
The course is supported by the University of The Third Age (U3A). Bookings can be made here.
| Week 1 – 3 March – Opening lecture and course overview | Thomas M Wilson |
| Week 2 – 17 March- Stepping Off: Rewilding and Belonging in the South-West | Thomas M Wilson |
| Week 3 – 31 March – Exercised: Why Something We Never Evolved to do is Healthy and Rewarding | Daniel Lieberman |
| Week 4 – 14 April – The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous | Joseph Henrich |
| Week 5 – 28 April – Owning the Earth: The Transforming History of Land Ownership | Andro Linklater |
| Week 6 – 12 May – The Last Wild Men of Borneo: A True Story of Death and Treasure | Carl Hoffman |