SUNY New Paltz Speaker To Discuss Land and Sea Boundaries

NEW PALTZ — Louis De Vorsey, professor emeritus of geography at the University of Georgia, will speak at SUNY New Paltz on Wednesday, April 12. His talk, “Applied Geography from the World Court to Death Row,” will be held from 3:30 until 5 p.m. in Lecture Center 112.

Ronald Knapp, geography professor at New Paltz, explained, “Throughout his career, De Vorsey has specialized in the analysis of maps as historical documents in seeking solutions to land and sea boundary disputes.”

According to Laurence Hauptman, a professor in the History Department, De Vorsey will review and demonstrate how he helped solve three disputes that required formal tribunals. The first involved the United States-Canada seaward boundary through the Gulf of Maine and over Georges Bank. It was decided by the World Court at The Hague. The second was the case of “The United States v. Alaska,” which concerned a small geographic feature seaward of Pruhoe Bay. It was heard as an original action and decided by the U.S. Supreme Court. The final portion of De Vorsey’s presentation deals with a jurisdictional question involved in the trial of two defendants convicted of a murder in South Carolina.

Retired from the Naval Reserve with the rank of commander, De Vorsey attended specialized training courses in both tactical and strategic photographic intelligence. He saw active duty as photographic intelligence and training officer. He is the author of numerous books and articles, most recently The Southeast in Early Maps, published in its third edition by North Carolina Press in 1998.

De Vorsey will speak earlier in the day on the Seneca Nation legal case to students in Hauptman’s course, “Native American History,” at 10 a.m. in Humanities Building 214. Additionally, he will speak on Native American cartography in a 12:30 p.m. class of Jo Margaret Mano, associate professor of geography, in Humanities Building 310.

De Vorsey’s talk, open to the public free of charge, is one of three offered this semester by the American Indian Studies Program at New Paltz. It is funded by a grant from the SUNY New Paltz Foundation.

The Humanities Building is situated on the northwest side of the campus, between the Faculty Tower and the Lecture Center buildings. For more information, please contact Knapp at (845) 257- 2996 or Hauptman at (845) 257-3523.