Reclamation Workshop
A one-day workshop dedicated to interdisciplinary approaches to the material, aesthetic, political, and economic dimensions of reclamation.
RECLAMATION
April 5, 2024 (Friday)
8:45 am - 5:00 pm
Arch Room, Norris University Center
Please RSVP no later than March 29 if you plan to attend breakfast and/or lunch (and to let us know if you have any special dietary requirements).
RSVP link: https://forms.gle/WzNS22YgqtcMo62N8
Presented by the Environmental Humanities Research Workshop of the Kaplan Humanities Institute. Co-organized by Corey Byrnes (Asian Languages and Cultures, Comparative Literary Studies, and Kaplan Humanities Institute), Harris Feinsod (English and Comparative Literary Studies), and Maria Romanova (Asian Languages and Cultures and Comparative Literary Studies).
In an age of intensifying floods, sea level rise, and subsurface resource extraction, the territorialization of shorelines, rivers, coral reefs, marshes, and other watery environments has created shifting zones of both geopolitical conflict and urgent infrastructural repair, from strategic island building to coastal resilience planning. Reclamation projects shape sovereignty discourses and environmental futures, generating complex cultural, social, and legal debates. As coastal edges are hardened or softened to accommodate threats, they create new sites of planning as well as neglect. To better understand and respond to these wide-ranging shifts, we ask:
What can we learn from the cultural, environmental, and landscape histories of shoreline transformation?
How can we develop accounts of human and cultural relationships to coasts, shorelines, and other watery environments in a planetary age marked by an increasingly volatile hydrosphere?
Given Northwestern’s own distinct history of campus construction on two large reclamation sites, what obligations and possibilities are entailed in our identity as a waterfront institution?
The RECLAMATION workshop is open to the public and will feature short talks by Northwestern faculty and graduate students, a discussion of the newly published Silt Sand Slurry: Dredging, Sediment, and the Worlds We Are Making, a guided walk along the campus “lakefill,” and a talk by Sean Burkholder, Andrew Gordon Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania’s Weitzman School of Design, co-founder of the Environmental Modeling Lab (EMLab), and member of the Dredge Research Collaborative.
Featured Northwestern speakers:
Chandana Anusha (Kaplan Humanities Institute)
Lydia Barnett (History)
Corey Byrnes (Kaplan Humanities Institute, Comparative Literary Studies, and Asian Languages and Cultures)
Harris Feinsod (English and Comparative Literary Studies)
Hollyamber Kennedy (Art History)
Doug Kiel (History)
Uche Okpa-Iroha (Art History)
Mariajose Rodriguez Pliego (English)
Maria Romanova (Comparative Literary Studies and Asian Languages and Cultures)
SCHEDULE
8:45-9:30 am
Breakfast (for speakers and other RSVPs)
9:30-9:45 am
Opening Comments: Corey Byrnes
9:45-11:00 am
Panel I: Hollyamber Kennedy, Doug Kiel, Maria Romanova, Lydia Barnett
11:00-11:15 am
Coffee
11:15 am -12:30 pm
Presentation and Discussion with Sean Burkholder
12:30-1:00 pm
Lunch (for speakers and other RSVPs)
1:00-2:30 pm
Lakefill Walk + Special Collections Visit: Harris Feinsod
2:30-3:30 pm
Sand Silt Slurry: Dredging, Sediment, and the Worlds We Are Making: Group Book Discussion
(reading excerpts downloadable here)
3:30-3:45 pm
Coffee
3:45-5:00 pm
Panel II: Mariajosé Rodríguez-Pliego, Uche Okpa-Iroha, Chandana Anusha
5:00-5:15 pm
Closing Conversation
Questions?
Please contact Maria Romanova at mariaromanova2026@u.northwestern.edu