Radical Ecologies (RadLab)

Catalog description

Building on influences and dreamworlds from theorists, artists, designers, and scientists, RadLab offers an invitation to address what we are calling ‘radical ecologies’, or collective forms of life. We will incorporate experimental methods and field-based techniques in humanities-centered modes of social and cultural analyses to more critically and creatively examine the increasingly porous boundaries that structure our social and biological existence. Some of the topics we will discuss and experiment with include indeterminacy versus risk, multispecies work, the temporality of toxicity, and how we perceive planetary phenomena. Scholars and artists such as Karen Barad, Donna Harraway, Anna Tsing, and Mel Chen are representative of some of the work that will be drawn into our conversations of scientific readings. Students will combine oral presentation, creative projects, and written work to experiment with critical-creative apparatuses that might teach us how to attend and attune more intimately with the materialities of novel, unfamiliar ecologies in everyday lives.