Melt, Rise and Hydrological Globalization – An Origin Story 

ASCA Political Ecologies Workshop announces: Masterclass and Public Lecture with Dr. Cymene Howe (Rice University)

Public Lecture: Friday, March 6th @ 17:00-19:00 (Location TBA)

Melt, Rise and Hydrological Globalization – An Origin Story 

Around the globe glaciers and ice sheets are losing their mass, oceanic thermal expansion continues and populations are seeing landscapes denuded of ice while others are becoming flooded by seawater. Rapidly transforming cryo- and hydrospheres promise misery to millions. But these elemental state-shifts are also locations of material connectivity where places and people are becoming linked through their water. In this presentation, I juxtapose the loss of Icelandic glaciers with rising seas in lower latitude coastal cities impacted by Arctic melt. A theoretical proposition that I call “hydrological globalization” forms the analytic infrastructure for the presentation and highlights a new NASA model that determines which glacial basins are contributing to sea level rise in the world’s coastal cities. I close with reflections on my recent public-facing work to memorialize the first major Icelandic glacier to be lost to climate change, Okjökull.

Cymene Howe is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Rice University and author of Ecologics: Wind and Power in the Anthropocene (Duke University Press) and Intimate Activism: The Struggle for Sexual Rights in Postrevolutionary Nicaragua, also at Duke University Press. Ecologics is one half of the duograph Wind and Power in the Anthropocene; Engergopolitics, by Dominic Boyer, is the other half.

https://anthropology.rice.edu/cymene-howe

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Masterclass: Friday, March 6th @ 10:00-12:00 (Location TBA)

Ecologics: Wind and Power in the Anthropocene

For the masterclass, Dr. Howe will discuss political ecologies in conversation with her recent book, Ecologics: Wind and Power in the Anthropocene (Duke UP). Students can access the book as open access (PDF download) here:  https://doi.org/10.25611/j5kf-mr18

Participants should read 1) the introduction, 2) the chapter on “wind,” and 3) Cristián Simonetti and Tim Ingold’s “Ice and Concrete: Solid Fluids of Environmental Change,” Journal of Contemporary Anthropology 5.1 (2018).

All interested in participating should email ASCA Political Ecologies Workshop organizers in advance:

Jeff Diamanti j.diamanti@uva.nl

Joost de Bloois: J.G.C.deBloois@uva.nl