Cultural Studies Association’s Environment, Space & Place Working Group Co-Chair Richard Simpson discusses the local, global, and transnational impact of cruise ships and the cruise ship industry with Constance Dijkstra, International Maritime Organization (IMO) policy manager for the advocacy group T & E, Karla Hart, co-founder of the Global Cruise Activist Network, and Luc Renaud, Associate Professor at the Department of Urban and Tourism Studies at the University of Quebec in Montreal. This podcast is accompanied by a scholarly commentary by Francesca Savoldi.
Articles by Karla Hart
Karla Hart has been living, observing, and ultimately pushing back against cruise industry colonization in Alaska since the 1980s. Hart worked in and around Alaska tourism for three decades in varying capacities, including as a business owner, serving as a governor’s appointee on the statewide tourism marketing board in the 1990s, and developing wildlife viewing tourism for the state. Now retired from employment, she is a community activist, co-founded the Global Cruise Activist Network in 2020, and is presently leading a campaign to enact Ship-Free Saturdays into law in Juneau, Alaska. Her academic background is interdisciplinary, with an emphasis in social sciences.