Tulane Global Humanities Center: Ports, Infrastructure, Territory with Stephen Ramos

Ports and infrastructural systems constitute territory across land and sea. They organize and structure spaces of foreland and hinterland for logistics regimes of extraction, labor, production, and consumption. Ports and infrastructure planning merge with biophysical systems to domesticate territory and co-create new hybrid ecologies. The presentation reviews select port city histories and the geo-engineering technologies of sediment dredge and management that maintain them. In his talk, Ramos will provide an opportunity to discuss interdisciplinary concepts and methods for the bourgeoning field of maritime humanities.

Stephen J. Ramos is an Associate Professor of Urban Planning and Design in the College of Environment + Design at the University of Georgia. He is author of Dubai Amplified: The Engineering of a Port Geography (Ashgate 2010; Routledge 2016), co-editor of Infrastructure Sustainability and Design (Routledge 2012), and a founding editor of New Geographies (GSD/Harvard University Press). He is Editor for the Americas for Planning Perspectives. In 2018-19, he was a Visiting Professor in the History of Architecture and Urban Planning Chair at TU Delft, the Netherlands. His professional practice includes work with Fundación Metrópoli, the International Society of City and Regional Planners, and work with NGOs throughout Latin America. He is a member of the International Advisory Board for the Leiden-Delft-Erasmus (LDE) Port City Futures initiative. He received a Doctor of Design (D.Des) degree from the Harvard Graduate School of Design in 2009.