The setting of the Star Trek TV shows and movies evokes a space-age world populated with aliens like stoic Vulcans and short-tempered Klingons aboard sleek starships. Though set in a distant future governed by the United Federation of Planets, the world of Star Trek quite often reflects the larger social and political issues affecting our planet today. 

“Geopolitics is embedded in Star Trek,” notes Fiona Davidson, an associate professor of geosciences in the Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences. “What we see in the storytelling is a constant intention to address things going on in the contemporary world.”
 
She will explore how the 60-plus years of Star Trek TV shows and movies have both reinforced and challenged audiences’ understandings of the contemporary world in her public lecture, “The Geography of Star Trek,” at 5:15 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 8, in Gearhart Hall Auditorium (GEAR 26). All on campus and in the community are invited to the lecture.

Davidson’s lecture will preview her Fall 2024 Honors College Signature Seminar, the Geography of Star Trek.

EXPLORING THE 'FINAL FRONTIER'

While the title “Geography of Star Trek” might have some thinking about the topography of Cardassia Prime, the lecture will examine how Star Trek conceptualizes physical space and the political entities that govern it. To Davidson, the shows and movies present space in a way that’s similar to the mindset that guided the Anglo-American empires — that it is something to be claimed and explored. 

“I found a map of Star Trek space from the 1970s that notes Klingon Space, Romulan Space, United Federation of Planets space, and around them all is a ring that’s been divided into ‘exploration zones,’” Davidson recalls. “It’s the Treaty of Tordesillas!” referring to the 1494 treaty between Spain and Portugal that divided control over the newly discovered Americas. 

This mindset is also on display in the opening lines of Star Trek’s original series — “Space, the final frontier.”

“We’re immediately introduced to the idea of the frontier,” Davidson points out. “And even in ‘Picard’ season three, the most recent Star Trek, is structured around this celebration of Frontier Day. We’re still going back to this idea of the frontier, which gets the shows into questions of othering and appropriating lands,” she says.

She notes that this trend across Star Trek demonstrates the personal impact of Enlightenment and 20th century ideologies of colonialism on the original series creator, Gene Rodenberry. 

“[There was a view that] U.S. hegemony should expand for the good of the countries that are less developed than us — less ‘civilized’ than us,” she explains. “That the ultimate human good comes from having the expansion of the American empire, and that’s exactly what the British were doing in the 19th century and early 20th century.”

WHY MEDIA MATTERS

Alongside diving into the specific parallels between Star Trek’s storylines and geopolitical forces, Davidson’s lecture will also demonstrate the value of seeing popular media as different texts to be analyzed for messages beyond mere entertainment.

“[The series] is almost always framing the United Federation’s adversaries in a way where we recognize them as our adversaries,” she highlights. “Star Trek is really bad about not conceptualizing [physical] space in ways that take us out of that Anglo-American empire.”

One key example of this ideological commentary comes from Star Trek: the Next Generation, where the main antagonists are the Borg, cybernetic humanoids linked together into a unified hive mind. To Davidson, having an adversary that overtly symbolizes political collectivism speaks to the show’s geopolitical context of the show airing in the late 1980s.

“The show is saying that individualism, which reflects the 1980s neoliberalism of the U.S. and Western World, has to be paramount,” she says. “Therefore, the Borg as a collective entity is the most frightening thing we can imagine.”

Ultimately, media that reflects back the dominant norms surrounding power and ideology will color the viewers’ and citizens’ impressions of events happening on the international stage.

“If you frame your show’s adversary as something that we recognize as our adversary as viewers, then it’s very easy for us to sit back and say, ‘well, these are the bad guys, therefore we’re the good guys,” Davidson explains. “It reinforces our conception that this is the way the world works.”

ABOUT FIONA DAVIDSON

Davidson is a native of the west of Scotland and is an associate professor in the Department of Geosciences. She is a political and cultural geographer who received a B.A. from the University of Northumbria and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Nebraska. 

She initially undertook research in the political geography of European nationalist movements, but more recently has focused on the geography of U.S. presidential elections and the geopolitics embedded in contemporary media. Her focus is the geopolitical subtext of science fiction, especially Star Trek, and she is the author of multiple academic articles and book chapters on the subject. 

Her current work is on the ways in which the United Federation of Planets is an extension of the Anglo-American empire.

SIGNATURE SEMINARS EXPLORE DIVERSE TOPICS

The Geography of Star Trek is one of four Honors College Signature Seminars scheduled for fall and summer 2024. Other topics to be explored include:

Technology Craft — taught by Vincent Edwards, director of technology for the School of Art, and Edmund Harriss, assistant professor of mathematics;

Gothic — taught by Lynda Coon, Honors College dean, and Kim Sexton, associate professor of architecture; and 

Fashion, Identity and Power — taught by Eric Darnell Pritchard, associate professor of English and Brown Chair in English Literacy.

Deans of each college may nominate professors to participate in this program, and those selected to teach will become Dean’s Fellows in the Honors College.    

Honors students must apply to participate, and those selected will be designated Dean’s Signature Scholars. The course application is posted online on the Signature Seminars web page. The deadline to apply is Monday, March 10.

About the Honors College: The University of Arkansas Honors College was established in 2002 and brings together high-achieving undergraduate students and the university’s top professors to share transformative learning experiences. Each year the Honors College awards up to 90 freshman fellowships that provide $80,000 over four years, and more than $1 million in undergraduate research and study abroad grants. The Honors College is nationally recognized for the high caliber of students it admits and graduates. Honors students enjoy small, in-depth classes, and programs are offered in all disciplines, tailored to students’ academic interests, with interdisciplinary collaborations encouraged. All Honors College graduates have engaged in mentored research.

About the University of Arkansas: As Arkansas' flagship institution, the U of A provides an internationally competitive education in more than 200 academic programs. Founded in 1871, the U of A contributes more than $2.2 billion to Arkansas’ economy through the teaching of new knowledge and skills, entrepreneurship and job development, discovery through research and creative activity while also providing training for professional disciplines. The Carnegie Foundation classifies the U of A among the few U.S. colleges and universities with the highest level of research activity. U.S. News & World Report ranks the U of A among the top public universities in the nation. See how the U of A works to build a better world at Arkansas Research News.