SEBERANG PENANG STORY LECTURES: James R. Logan, A Polymath on a Province Wellesley Plantation

SEBERANG PENANG STORY LECTURES: James R. Logan, A Polymath on a Province Wellesley Plantation
by Dr Gerrell Drawhorn

Date: 15 August 2015, Saturday
Time: 9.30 am-12.30pm
Venue: 1st floor, Sri Ananda Bahwan Restaurant. 2985 Jalan Bagan Luar, Butterworth
Near the site of Butterworth Fringe Festival, Jalan Jeti Lama

Please click here for google map.

Free Admission. Limited seats only. RSVP info@pht.org.my.
Tel 604-2642631 before Friday, 14 August, 12 pm.

ABSTRACT
James Richardson Logan (1819-1869) has a monument erected in his honor in front of the court house in Penang. But who was this man and why did the government abhor him while locals of all races loved him? And what was his special connection to Seberang Prai? Logan was a lawyer, newspaper editor, a plantation owner, a philanthropist, a geologist, a climate change theorist, a linguist, a cultural evolutionary theorist, an explorer, and one of the first to collect cultural information on the orang asli. He was the editor of the Pinang Gazette and the founder and editor of the Journal of the Indian Archipelago and Eastern Asia, better known as ‘Logan’s Journals’. In addition, he was one of Province Wellesley’s largest landowners. This talk will open a window on Logan, his era, and the significance he may hold for understanding science and politics in Malay Settlements during the Victorian period.

SPEAKER’S PROFILE
Dr. Gerrell Drawhorn is a UC Berkeley and UC Davis graduate in Biological Anthropology. His publications range from Tree Shrews, the relationships of the earliest hominins to his Ph.D. dissertation on Fossil Orangutans. His interests in the history of evolutionary thought and Alfred Russel Wallace led him to discover the long neglected 19th century writings of James Richardson Logan, a man who could be called Malaysia’s first evolutionary scientist. Dr. Drawhorn currently teaches at California State University in Sacramento.

 

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