Workshop with Professor Lydia Gibson. Workshop with Raju Chalwadi and Rebecca Winkler
Session I: Workshop with Lydia Gibson, Assistant Professor of Race and Technology Georgetown University.
Session II: Workshop of PhD Chapter drafts with
Raju Chalwadi, CASI Visiting Scholar (Spring 2026), and
Rebecca Winkler, PhD Candidate, Department of Anthropology, UPenn
Location: Center for the Advanced Study of India
Ronald O. Perelman Center for Political Science & Economics
Coastal Worlds
A Conference by the Center for the Advanced Study of India
in partnership with EnviroLab, Penn Anthropology, and Penn Music
Organizers:
Professor Nikhil Anand (Interim Director, CASI)
Dr. Matt Barlow (TU Munich; CASI Climate Postdoc, 2024-25)
Dr. Sita Mamidipudi (CASI Climate Postdoc)
Location:
March 25: PCPSE Auditorium (Lower Level) 133 S. 36th Street
March 26-27: Penn Museum (Widener Lecture Hall) 3260 South Street and Penn Music (Lerner 101) 201 S. 34th Street
About the Conference:
The coastal worlds of the Indian Ocean emerge through long and connected histories of trade, migration, exploitation, and resistance, as dynamic places where traditions, livelihoods, ecologies and cultures mesh. The social worlds and lively ecologies of these places constantly adapt to and re-orient within the more-than-environmental climates in which they are made, offering insights into trans-scalar practices and politics across place and time, connected through weather, water, and sociality in the aftermath of colonial and capitalist extraction.
Taking the Indian Ocean and its coastlines as both method and analytic, this conference will challenge terrestrial and state-based approaches to socio-ecological knowledge making and encourages participants to think through permeability, fluidity, transformation, and excess in amphibious worlds (Anand 2025; Camargo et al. 2025). We ask: How does being situated on the edge of the Indian Ocean reframe discussions of climate change, urbanization, and infrastructure, and in doing so, help to re-imagine shared histories and imagined futures (Dewan 2021)? How do the monsoonal rhythms of littoral worlds affect livelihoods where communities are forced to adapt to disappearing coastlines and engineered shores (Harms 2024)? Why is it important to understand coasts themselves as processes of desiccation and design, as fabrications of a two-dimensional cartographic imaginary (Chitra 2024)?
Please check the CASI website for the Conference registration link. https://casi.sas.upenn.edu/events/coastal-worlds-conference
Workshop with Nityanand Jayaraman. Workshop with Adwaita Banerjee
Session I: Workshopping PhD Chapter Draft with Adwaita Banerjee PhD candidate, Department of Anthropology, UPenn.
Session II: Workshop with Nityanand Jayaraman, CASI Residence Scholar (Spring 2026), Environmental justice advocate and journalist.
Location: Center for the Advanced Study of India
Ronald O. Perelman Center for Political Science & Economics
Workshopping AAA Paper Presentations
Location: Center for the Advanced Study of India
Ronald O. Perelman Center for Political Science & Economics
133 South 36th Street (Suite 230)
Talk by Matt Barlow
Postdoctoral Researcher in Sustainable Urban Environments, Technical University of Munich (TUM), School of Social Sciences and Technology, Department of Science, Technology and Society (STS); CASI Postdoctoral Research Fellow (2024-25)
"Saving the Backwaters": Life, Depth, and the Opacity of Infrastructure in Kochi, India
Location: Center for the Advanced Study of India
Ronald O. Perelman Center for Political Science & Economics
133 South 36th Street (Suite 230)
Call for Papers EnviroLab Graduate Conference - (Un)Doing Catastrophe
EnviroLab’s Graduate Conference is a biennial event that gathers a community of graduate students and faculty working on environmental research projects. This year, the conference theme will be (Un)Doing catastrophe. See the conference abstract at the link below or apply here until December 15th.
Workshopping Grant Applications
Location: Center for the Advanced Study of India
Ronald O. Perelman Center for Political Science & Economics
133 South 36th Street (Suite 230)
Conversarion with Professor Marisa Solomon
Suggested reading:
Location: Penn Museum, Room 345.
Talk by Professor Lalitha Kamath
“Dushkal Temporalities: Reframing Time in Planning for the Climate Crisis”
A Talk by Lalitha Kamath, Professor, Centre for Urban Policy & Governance, School of Habitat Studies, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai; CASI Spring 2025 Visiting Scholar
Thursday, February 27, 2025 - 12:00
Location: Center for the Advanced Study of India Ronald O. Perelman Center for Political Science & Economics 133 South 36th Street, Suite 230 Philadelphia PA 19104-6215
Talk by Professor Juanita Sundberg
"Listening to Sargassum beyond the Sargasso Sea: Multispecies Storytelling and Seaweed Blooms in the Mexican Caribbean.”
Location: Blank Forum, PCPSE, 133 36th Street, Philadelphia
Talk by Dr. Megnaa Mehtta
Retreat or Remain? Understanding Notions of Risk, a “Full Life” and a “Slow Death” from the Sundarbans Coastlines.
Workshopping Grant Applications with Vivian, Nippun, and Clara
Location: Perry World House, Classroom 108
Book Talk: Lisa Yin Han, Pitzer College
Location: Room 500, Annenberg School for Communication, 3620 Walnut Street
Stories of Climate Action: Framing and Fabricating Futures in Mumbai
This talk dwells in the stories of residents living in Mumbai’s wet worlds, to show how the climate is already being inhabited in the city. Register here: tinyurl.com/urbanclimates
Penn Kleinman Center for Energy Policy
220 South 34th Street Philadelphia, PA 19104
Conversation with Professor Elizabeth Povinelli
Suggested readings:
Kyle Whyte "Indigenous Science (Fiction) for the Anthropocene" Environment and Planning E
Zoe Todd, "Fish, Kin, Hope" Afterall
Elizabeth Povinelli, The Wasted Earth: Excess, Superabundance, and Sludge.” eflux journal #129
Rm 419, Penn Museum
Film Screening: Karrabing Film Collective
The Family & the Zombie (2021, 30 mins)
Night Fishing with Ancestors (2023, 25 minutes) - trailer
Location TBA
2024 Penn EnviroLab Graduate Conference
Penn EnviroLab’s interdisciplinary graduate conference will gather a community of graduate students and faculty from March 22-23, 2024 to consider how (and what modes of) elemental thinking can inform our work across varying matters and geographies of concern.
Register here.
Internal Workshop
We will be reading and workshopping chapters from Becca and Xiao, followed by a happy hour at Louie Louie.
Penn Museum Rm 329
Muddy Waters: Reimagining Futures in Wet Asia
Today, anthropogenic climate change — cyclones, floods, and storm surges permeate and punctuate the regularity of everyday life in much of South and Southeast Asia. The catastrophic harms that are visited by these events are neither linear nor are they evenly distributed, but are a result of historic projects to manage, tame and regulate waters with the land-centric imaginaries of colonial and postcolonial states. Rather than approach questions of design and history with dry ground at the center, Nikhil Anand (Penn Anthropology), Prasenjit Duara (Duke History), Maira Hayat (Notre Dame Kroc Institute), and Marvi Mazhar (architect and researcher) think about the kinds of futures and histories that might be made thinking in and from the waterscapes (oceans, rivers and littoral regions) in which they have long worked.
Class of 1978 Orrery Pavilion, 6th floor
Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books, and Manuscripts
Van Pelt Library, 3420 Walnut Street
Registration and more information here.
Conversation with Marcy Norton
Dr. Marcy Norton (Penn History) will be joining us to share the Introduction chapter of her new book The Tame and the Wild: People and Animals After 1492 (HUP 2024).
Mock AAA presentations
Workshop for lab members to practice their AAA talks. Please let Pablo or Vivian know if you have something to share.