Title: Space, “The Final Frontier”: How Anthropologists Approach the Study of Human Space Exploration

Speaker: Laura T. González

Space – Roddenberry famously called it the “final frontier.” The 2020s will be a decade in which humans increasingly lay claim to places previously untouched and uninhabited by our species. As such, anthropologists have much to say about cultural attitudes and language of colonization, what our bodies need to be successful for life on the frontier, and what artifacts are worth preserving during our conquest. This talk gives a four-fields overview of some of the important ways archaeologists, and cultural, linguistic, and biological anthropologists are approaching the study of human space exploration.

Laura T. González is professor of anthropology at San Diego Miramar College. She was the recipient of the Oxford University Press/American Anthropological Association Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Anthropology Teaching in 2018. She has published two textbooks, Through the Lens of Anthropology (2nd ed. 2018), with co-author Robert J. (Bob) Muckle, and Through the Lens of Cultural Anthropology (2019) with University of Toronto Press.