How do we rethink 'catastrophe' so as to find new ways of being and acting in the world(s) we inhabit? How can 'catastrophe' be untied from notions of calculability, prediction, and control that organize 'modern' institutions? How have communities, individuals, social movements, histories, and places remade life after catastrophe?
Panels and Screening information:
Epistemic Crisis: The Limits of Modeling, Managing, and Governing Catastrophe
Chair: Ramah McKay, Penn
Discussant: Raja Swamy, University of Tennessee
Panelists:
Imagine a Colombian River Full of Hippos: Modeling Risk and Invasion in the aquatic environments-Alejandra Osejo Varona, Rice University
Water as Catastrophe: Governmentality and Amphibious Life in the Bengal Delta-Md Tasnim Islam Patwary, Texas Technical University
Histories of Resilience and Risk: Oasis Agriculture in the Face of Cultural and Climatic Change-Alessandra Dominguez, Penn
The Way Out is Always Through: Redeeming Ecological Catastrophe through Technical Futurity in the (Post)Soviet Periphery-Rowan Claire Choe-Maher, UCLA
Temporalities: Half-lives and afterlives
Chair: Emily Ng, Penn
Discussant: Joshua Moses, Haverford College
Vibrating Through Catastrophe: Affective Resonance, Institutional Dissonance-Uthman Khan, University of Alberta
Fatigue and the Politics of Closure: Testing the Limits of Modernist Crisis Management in the Flint Water Crisis-Elena Sobrino, Tufts
Harvest Time in the Sine-Saloum Delta-Sehdia Mansaray, UNC
The Future is Already Past: The Weight of Time under a Changing Climate-Shahram Sarwar Abbas, University of Michigan
Resources and Resourcing
Chair: Kristina Lyons, Penn
Discussant: Andrea Marston, Rutgers
Coping with Catastrophe: Skill, Distinction, and Interspecies Intimacy with Tai Dam Foragers in Des Moines-Paolina Lu, UC Davis
Out of Coal?: Precarity, Youth, and Ecological Governance in a Chinese Company Town-Hechen Liu, CUNY Graduate Center
Mediating Ecological Simplification: Parade flowers and coffee cultivation in Jacaltenango, Guatemala-Juan José Lopez, Vanderbilt
No Little Plans for Pork: Architecture, Infrastructure, and the Urban Futures of China’s Pig Production-Ran Mei, New York University
Refusal and Repair
Chair: Nikhil Anand, Penn
Discussant: Marisa Solomon, Barnard
God in Garbage: Mapping Piety onto Waste Infrastructure in Urban Indonesia-Amrina Rosyada, Northwestern
Catastrophe as Nature’s Laboratory: Primate Hybridization, Evolution, and the Undoing of Purity in the Anthropocene-Lilith Frakes, UC Santa Cruz
Catastrophic Revelation: Ancestral Jurisdiction and Nuclear Atmospheres in the Pacific Marianas-Kaylani Hocog Manglona, Penn
Curative malaise. Science, magic, and unsettlement in an agricultural epidemic-Zachary La Rock, MIT
Screening Catastrophe
Chair: Rahul Mukherjee, Penn
Corals of Bidong-Alvin Luong, Penn ‘25
The Island of Tangier-Domenick Fini and Pratha Purushottam
NONSTOP-Zac Manuel and Marta Rodriguez Maleck, Penn ‘24
Beneath the Concrete, The Forest-Lev Omelchenko
Endlings-María Luisa Santos, Stanford
Buckskin-Mars Verrone