A special episode featuring LAC's April 2022 roundtable event (Co)Figurations of Care: Experience and Infrastructure in the Medical Humanities, featuring Anna Ulrikke Andersen, MK Czerwiec, and Victoria Lupascu. This roundtable discussed care and its multiple and diverse configurations. Care ranges from looking after a patient, to being attuned to the needs of the self and its surroundings, to reorganizing the built medical environment. Our speakers' work reflects on the biopolitical...

A special episode featuring LAC's March 2022 roundtable event (Co)Figurations of Experience: Ecocritical Approaches to Virtual Worlds, featuring Alenda Y. Chang, Jonathan Correa, Kathryn Hamilton (a.k.a. Sister Sylvester), and Deniz Tortum. This roundtable explored the ecocritical dimensions of digital and virtual environments. Through an interdisciplinary approach to video games, pedagogy, VR, and contemporary art, what possible future(s) are envisioned by and through the experience of...

In this episode, LAC member Merve Tabur interviews Penn State professor Mark Sentesy. Sentesy introduces his research in philosophical anthropology and the Anthropocene and discusses how ancient views on human relationship to nature compare to our modern-day conceptions. Underscoring the significance of a philosophical understanding of environmental justice concerns today, Sentesy also shares his pedagogical approaches to teaching climate ethics.

In this episode, LAC member Müge Gedik interviews Dr. Özlem Öğüt Yazıcıoğlu. Dr. Öğüt Yazıcıoğlu discusses her new book project Shamanism in the Contemporary Novel: Histories of Lands, Animals, and Peoples beyond the Nature/Culture Divide on shamanism in contemporary literature, encompassing Northern Siberia, China, North America, Australia, and Turkey. She highlights the importance of kinship and forging ties with other human and more-than-human life forms as resistance to overextraction and...

In this episode, LAC member Merve Tabur interviews Dr. Gizem Yılmaz Karahan. Dr. Yılmaz Karahan discusses her research on written and visual representations of disease and contagion in the writings of the Ottoman traveller Evliya Çelebi (1611-1682) and in the medical illustrations of an Ottoman surgeon, Şerafeddin Sabuncuğlu (1385-1468). Putting ancient Greek, Arab, and Ottoman Turkish philosophies and scientific discourses in conversation with contemporary discussions on posthumanism and...

LAC member Michelle McGowan interviews Francisco Guevara, a visual artist and curator. Guevara specializes in Levinasian ethics applied to the design of cross-cultural artistic projects as well as the analysis of performativity in contemporary art practices. He has over 20 years of experience designing, curating, managing arts projects, and promoting social change. Guevara is co-founder and Co-Executive Director of Arquetopia, a non-profit foundation and transnational artist residency program...

This episode is a recording of the Unraveling the Anthropocene roundtable, our keynote event which was held on March 29 of 2021, in the context of the Comparative literature luncheon speaker series. Merve Tabur (LAC vice president) introduced the speakers and served as moderator. The event gathered over 50 attendees from various departments, who participated in an enriching Q&A session. The Q&A session was not recorded. During the event, speakers shared audiovisual materials with...

In this episode, LAC member Müge Gedik interviews Berfin Çiçek, a graduate student in Cultural Studies at Sabancı University in Turkey. They discuss Berfin’s project on the revival of trauma and intergenerational memory catalyzed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Berfin takes the testimony of a member from the descendent generation of Dersim massacre victims from Turkey, his grandfather, into the focus of her project while exploring how traumatic experiences trigger each other and create an...

LAC member Michelle McGowan interviews Dr. Rebecca Tarlau, an Assistant Professor of Education and Labor and Employment Relations at The Pennsylvania State University. They discuss Dr. Tarlau’s book Occupying Schools, Occupying Land: How the Landless Workers Movement Transformed Brazilian Education (Oxford, 2019) and the intersections of Brazil’s Landless Workers Movement (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem Terra, or MST) with issues of climate justice, COVID-19, and social movements more...

In this episode, LAC member Müge Gedik has a conversation with Dr. Michele Prettyman on the intersection between academic and spiritual discourses. The episode explores certain political implications of excluding certain views of life and inhabiting the world. Dr. Prettyman advocates for spiritually animating inquiry as a part of our lives. This part of inquiry opens a space for discovery and imagination to engage with life’s bigger questions as a response to very few people outside of...

How does antiblackness, slavery, and police power structure society? What has the COVID-19 pandemic revealed about policing? In this episode LAC member Irenae Aigbedion has a provocative conversation with Dr. Tryon Woods (University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth; Providence College) on police violence, police power, and the interrelated systems and inequities that structure society. The two discuss the ways that state and police power has transformed from slavery to the present. Ultimately,...

In this episode, LAC member Merve Tabur interviews community organizers Colleen Unroe, Teri Blanton, and Parson Brown. Unroe, Blanton, and Brown share their experiences with various nonviolent direct actions to stop mountaintop removal coal mining. They discuss the significance of documenting the stories of people who are most affected by the abuses of the coal industry. They also reflect on the evolution of community organizing strategies over the years and emphasize the importance of "Just...

In this episode, LAC member Müge Gedik has a conversation with Kyle Keeler on the colonial roots of our current epoch, popularly referred to as “the Anthropocene.” Keeler highlights the history of centuries of violent colonialism that would set in motion the industrial production, chemicals, and bomb blasts that are argued to distinguish the Anthropocene from previous epochs. Focusing on violent colonial theft, Keeler changes the name of this epoch to the Kleptocene, to call attention to to...

In this episode, LAC member Merve Tabur has a conversation with Dr. Daniel Finch-Race on the impact of climate change on Venice and the mitigation efforts led by the government, the NGOs, and the local community. Describing life in Venice during the November 2019 flood, Dr. Finch-Race discusses the various coping strategies adopted by the city's inhabitants and comments on how the pandemic has affected pollution levels in Venice. Dr. Finch-Race also examines the similarities and differences...

Pablo Valenzuela, Chilean teacher and drag queen, shares his experience and that of his community living during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In this episode, LAC member Merve Tabur has a conversation with Dr. Sofia Varino on her "Viral Objects" project which brings together biomedical, ecological, and popular science discourses on the COVID-19 Pandemic. As defined by Dr. Varino, "Viral Objects" are biomedical objects such as masks, vaccines, COVID-19 tests, and Vitamin D supplements that serve a preventative function and invite us to "think ecologically" about the pandemic. Dr. Varino also introduces the "Minor Cosmopolitanisms"...

In a conversation with LAC member Müge Gedik, Rimona Afana discusses the ties between speciesism and ecocide. She argues that without challenging our speciesist beliefs and institutions, we cannot advance justice and peace in the Anthropocene. Rimona’s cross-disciplinary research informs her multimedia artwork, collaborative projects, and activism. We will also listen to a short excerpt of her audio/video poem, “wood”, and learn about the story behind it.

In a conversation with LAC member Camila Gutiérrez (Penn State), Javiera Irribarren (Columbia University) discusses how contemporary graphic narratives from Chile, Argentina and Brazil offer non-western views on the interactions between species, time, and spaces. She argues that South American artists make a decolonial move in these comics; questioning historical and contemporary conflicts. In these materials, Irribarren finds powerful alter-native critiques of the current neoliberal State,...

In this episode, LAC members Merve Tabur and K'Lah Rose Yamada interview Dr. Karen Keifer-Boyd, Michele Mekel, and Lauren Stetz from the Viral Imaginations: COVID-19 project. Viral Imaginations (#Penn State) is a collaborative art project that consists of an online gallery that aims to curate current and former Pennsylvanians’ creative engagements with the pandemic. The Viral Imaginations team discusses the significance of artistic expression and storytelling in the face of ecological...

LAC member Camila Gutiérrez interviews working artist, teacher, and researcher Melissa Leaym-Fernandez.  Leaym-Fernandez has worked in a variety of creative learning spaces that include rural towns, urban cities, and sites with environmental toxins, including with the lead-poisoned in Flint, Michigan, and many other students who are intimidated to develop creative skills but need them in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.  Her professional practice includes using artmaking to teach people...

In this episode, LAC member Müge Gedik welcomes Dr. Paulo Ilich Bacca, a legal ethnographer and the Director of Ethnic and Racial Discrimination Area at Dejusticia, Centre for the Study of Law, Justice, and Society in Bogotá, Colombia. Paulo’s research proposes the idea of indigenizing international law by following the anthropological turn in which indigenous cosmologies are direct to the framework of an international legal order. This displacement highlights the power of indigenous law to...

In Episode 14, “‘All the Way to Hell’: Mineral Rights Between Art and Activism,” Hannah Matangos and Merve Tabur interview visual artist and activist Eliza Evans. Evans introduces her activist-art project “All the Way to Hell,” which aims to draw attention to fossil fuel development on private land in the U.S. by giving away mineral rights to participants. In addition to discussing the purpose and reception of the project, Evans, Hannah, and Merve also have a conversation about the history...

What is the connection between race and environmental justice? Which communities are disproportionately affected by the climate crisis? How does including race along with class, gender, sexuality, and disability for climate justice provide a broader perspective on climate change research and adaptation strategies? In this episode, LAC member Müge Gedik interviews Dr. Nancy Tuana (Penn State, UP) about her new project “Climate Apartheid: Forgetting of Race in the Anthropocene.” We focus on an...

What does performance and protest look like in a time of pandemic? How do we study live performance at a moment when keeping our distance is the safest way to keep safe? When do we as researchers stop observing and put our bodies on the line in solidarity with protest movements? In this episode, Irenae Aigbedion (LAC) and Camila Gutiérrez (LAC) interview Dr. Elizabeth Gray (Penn State) on her current and future work on art and activism in Latin America. We focus on her book project, The...