Date/Time
Date(s) - 03/04/2013
2:00 pm - 3:30 pm

Location
CA 508

Category(ies) No Categories

Professor Jane Stadler will present her explorations of spatial history, mapping, and mobility in relation to the film Red Dog. Red Dog is based on three books that narrate the true story of a nomadic Red Cloud Kelpie cattle dog that was adopted by the mining community of Australia’s northwest Pilbara region in the1970s. Representations of Red Dog’s travels highlight the network of economic, geographical, and cultural factors that shape mobility in Australia’s largest, richest, and least densely populated state. In relation to work in progress on The Cultural Atlas of Australia, a cultural heritage project that maps the settings of films, novels, and plays, Professor Stadler considers the challenges of mapping movement through space and time using digital cartography. She argues that using geovisualization techniques to foreground spatial history and mobility in Red Dog reveals complex relationships between the mining industry, the Pilbara community, and myths of national and regional identity conveyed in cultural narratives.