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Spring 2024

Thursday, April 25, 2:30-4:00 pm: Join us for a follow-up to our winter event, "Palestinian Landscapes of Dispossession and Rooted Resilience," Nature, Space, and Politics would like to invite you to a reading-dialogue session in the Community Commons Room in the Design and Innovation Building (Room 330). 

In collaboration with Dr. Amanda Batarseh, we convene around a selection of readings that center ecologies of food in Palestine as complex epistemic sites and practices of place-making and imagination within and against settler-colonial eco-occupation and genocide.

While drawing on discussions and themes touched upon in our winter event, the centering of food and food systems as weaponization and mediation of power is also provoked by the state of Israel and their transnational collaborators' structural creation of famine, or the "brink" of famine, in Gaza. We look toward ecologies of food as vivid and, in many ways, violent and problematic, sites of place-making, memory, everyday labor of care, imagination, and futurity.

Our readings take shape around and build off Dr. Lila Sharif's works "Vanishing Palestine" and "Savory Colonialism" to think with how "the story of vanishment"—and the everyday writing, foraging, cooking, and imagining against it —is unable to be encapsulated by legal and positivist renderings; nor is the story linear and inevitable. How does food offer a medium/pathway to assess and critique settler-colonial spatial arrangements, historical narratives, and other structures of violence while also mapping and building decolonized geographies and futures?

 

Winter 2024

Monday, March 11, 3-5 pm (on zoom only): Join us in a conversation with Brian Goldfarb and Judith Faifman. To receive a zoom link, RSVP here. 

In their talk, "Care and Translation in Times of Existential Crisis,” Goldfarb and Faifman take as an example forms of mobilization in Latin America by groups such as the Landless Rural Workers Movement and La Via Campesina, to explore how experiences of translation, interpretation, and interconnectedness embed care mediation in public processes of problematization. Goldfarb and Faifman argue that in the context of heightened threats to human well-being and environmental health at local, regional, and global scales, we are witnessing the emergence of sustained collaborative networked efforts that reconfigure the relationships between academic and non-academic actors and intertwine scholarship with activist and citizen media. Fundamental to the emergence of these networks are forms of translation across modes of existence and styles of inquiry that their constituents enact as they strive to articulate shared understandings of hurdles and goals (“care problems”). The analysis of participation in long-termist social movements in Latin America and globally allows us to characterize care problem posing as the relational and processual coproduction of multidimensional understanding of situated and interdependent problems. A process that entails the acknowledgement of viable alternative solutions, while making explicit the principles and criteria of decision making, monitoring the impacts of interventions, and assessing the equity and sustainability of modes of resolution. 

 

 

 

Wednesday, January 31st, 3-5 pm: Join us us in a conversation with Dr. Ahlam Muhtaseb and Dr. Gary Fields, moderated by Dr. Amanda Batarseh. The event is co-sponsored by the Program for the Study of Religion and the Middle East Studies Program. Please RSVP here. Space is limited.

Palestinian Landscapes of Dispossession and Rooted Resilience centers the expanded field of landscape as "a medium and method" (Khayyat, 2022) for illuminating histories and futures of Palestine in relation with global Indigenous and environmental justice movements. In dialogue with Dr. Muhtaseb, Dr. Fields, and Dr. Bataresh, we seek to bring landscape to the foreground by attending to human and more-than-human relationships, environmental temporalities, and (agri)cultural practices, that endure and resist the ongoing and deepening structures of settler-colonial violence and dispossession of Palestinian people and places. 

  

 

 

 

Fall 2023 

November 30, 2023, 2-4:00 pm: Please RSVP to join us in MCTF Conference Room 202 (Scripps Institution of Oceanography) for an NSP event with Dr. Craig Santos Perez centered around the collection of eco-poetry in his book Habitat Threshold. 

Perez is from the Pacific Island of Guåhan (Guam). He is the co-editor of seven anthologies, including Indigenous Pacific Islander Eco-Literatures. He is also the author of six books of poetry and the monograph Navigating Chamoru Poetry: Indigeneity, Aesthetics, and Decolonization. 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

October 26, 2023, 4-6:00 pm: Join NSP in conversation with shared morsels and refreshments around The Green Table, located in the Muir College quad. Seaweed pressings made at last year's spring capstone event will be on display and available for pick up by those who participated. In the meantime, please put us on your calendars and send us an RSVP here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Below is a summary of our past meetings and events. Sign up for our mailing list to keep updated and join our meetings.

 

2022-2023 - Nature, Space, and Politics V


Thurs. Oct. 13, 4-6 pm: Fall Welcome Reception on the Communication building patio. An informal gathering to usher in the academic year and meet folks involved in the group. Light catering will be provided. Feel free to stop by this Thursday, even if you did not get a chance to RSVP.

 

 

 



 

Thurs. Oct. 20, 4-5:30 pm: NSP, Just Transitions and COGR 275. Environmental Communication Collaborative Reading: On Max Liboiron's Pollution Is Colonialism. We are not assigning specific pages, so read any selections that pique your curiosity. Optional to also read the CLEAR Lab's Manual which outlines their research praxis. Meeting will be held in the JTI Lab rm. 331 (Design and Innovation building- across from the Trolley station).

 

 

 

 

Thursday, Jan. 26, 4-6pm: Please join us for a zoom roundtable on Climate and Environmental Justice in SE Asia. It will feature a fantastic and diverse group of speakers, including a leading journalist and a former Goldman Prize EJ winner from East Timor. This event is organized by Global South Studies and co-sponsored by NSP and a number of other organizations across campus.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thursday, Feb. 16,  2- 3:30pm at PEB 721 (Public Engagement Building, located in the new Sixth College): We are very excited to kick off Winter Qtr. Nature, Space, Politics events with a book discussion of Prof. Eric Stanley's new book, Atmospheres of Violence: Structuring Antagonism and the Trans/Queer Ungovernable. This event is co-sponsored by the Triton Underground Scholars, Breathable Streets, the Communication Department's Democracy Lab, and the Institute of Arts and Humanities. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

NSP-ElementalBorderigns.jpgThursday, March 9,  4- 6pm at PEB 721: Please join us for our Speakers Dialogue Series with critical border studies scholars Dr. Jason De León and Dr. Jorge Cuéllar in conversation about their current projects in different sites along the border regime between Central America, Mexico and the U.S. “Elemental Border(ing)s” is inspired by both scholars’ powerful work on the ecologies of border control and their attention to the “weaponization of nature” (De León 2015) be it desert, river, or jungle, and elemental (de)compositions of dust, mud and disease. Nature serves as alibi (De León 2015) for a toxic assemblage of border making processes—racism, femicide, militarization, privatization, extractivism, authoritarianism—and their necropolitics. The conversation will be moderated by Prof. Elana Zilberg (UCSD, Communication), and will feature comments by discussants Prof. Matt Vitz (UCSD, History) and Prof. Keolu Fox (UCSD, Anthropology).

 

 

 

  Thursday, April 13, 2-4 pm at PEB 721:  We are very excited to host the next NSP meeting, Atmospheric.  (de)Militarizations featuring Prof.s Eleana Kim (UCI, Anthropology) and Nicholas Shapiro (UCLA, Society and Genetics). In conversation with the guest speakers, this meeting will think through the human and more-than-human contributors to spaces of militarism/militarizations. Both scholars use ecological thinking to grapple with the production, complexity, and politics that composes militarized contexts and spaces. This conversation is an opportunity to engage with multiple environmental elements- toxicants, birds, invertebrates, surveillance technologies, people- to think through the multiple humans/animals/things that certainly shape and are shaped by, yet not entirely beholden to, state infrastructures and delineations. 

 

 

  Friday, June 2, 11 am - 6 pm at MCTF 210:  Please join Nature, Space and Politics, Urban Studies and Planning, and Scripps Center for Marine Biodiversity and Conservation at UC San Diego for Seaweed Horizons, an interdisciplinary, hands-on workshop gathering together scholars and scientists on the matter(s) and agency of errant marine algae.

Taking marine algae as a framework for critique of the characterization of species as “non-native” and “invasive,” artist/writer Joe Riley, artist/chef Audrey Snyder, and scientist/activist Danielle McHaskell collaboratively explore the hydropolitical ecology of out-of-place seaweeds. An interdisciplinary “co-laboratory,” Passengers of Change,considers these characterizations as points of contact for boundary work between artists and scientists in the study of improvisational and historical patterns of colonization across human and nonhuman systems inviting us to think with the transportation and archiving of seaweed biota and photographic and phycological materials at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography Archives. 

Led by marine ecologist Danielle McHaskell, MAMI WATA (Multi-year Assessment of Marine Invasive and Worldwide Algae Transported Across the Pacific) seeks to understand and account for the abundance and distribution of marine macroalgae Undaria pinnatifida and Sargassum horneri in the waters of coastal Southern California. Alongside marine ecological survey methods, the project is grounded in African and diasporic marine caretaking practices, water stories, and spirit.

This is a day-long event at Scripps including:

11am :Coffee and Welcome (MCTF 210)

11:30-1pm: Guest speaker dialogues with artist/writer Joe Riley, artist/chef Audrey Snyder, scientist/activist Danielle McHaskell & discussant Prof. Kelema Lee Moses (11.30-13.30pm MCTF 210)

1-2 pm: Catered lunch (MCTF 210, patio)

2-4 pm: Hands-on Seaweed Pressing Workshop (2-4 MCTF 140). Please wear leg covering and closed-toe shoes if joining for this per lab requirements.

4-6pm: NSP end of quarter reception (4-6pm MCTF 140, patio).

 

2021-2022 - Nature, Space, and Politics IV

Reading & Informal Discussion Session on Tuesday Oct 12th (4:00 p.m. - 5:30 p.m. PDT @ zoom). For our first meeting of the year, we convine to discuss two readings and building upon the following provocations: what is border(ing) as method? How is it performed? Who can perform it? Why do border(ing)s matter/or not/beyond geographical & institutional borders?

 

Guest Speakers Lorena Gómez Mostajo, Rihan Yeh, and David Morison Portillo to discuss the recent publication of Border Looping/ Vueltas Fronterizo. The book discusses David's performance-protest crossing the US-Mexico border, and our conversation can expand on questions such as: What was the experience of doing the performance-protest? What editorial decisions went into the book's publication? How are the multiple forms of border(ing)s expressed in this act and book? What is the relation between transgression and refusal?

We urge you all to support Taller California, and purchase this wonderful book directly through them! You can find a copy to purchase at: https://tallercalifornia.cargo.site/Libros

 

 Standing Ground, Slowing Down, and Refusals to Extractivism in Kumeyaay Land. Tuesday, Dec. 7 from 2-3:30 pm Nature, Space, Politics hosts a conversation with Bobby Wallace, a leader of the Barona Band of Mission Indians. Wallace is an active organizer, involved in sending support from San Diego to Standing Rock, and in countering the SD-TJ border wall. Our conversation will emphasize the ways in which the border crosses Kumeyaay land, and the various practices of resistance and refusal against such division. We will focus attention on the extractive practices of borders, refusals to State borders, and contemporary Kumeyaay activism against the State bordering process. This meeting will also feature Prof. Boatema Boateng (Communication) and Prof. Cathy Gere (History; UCSD Green New Deal) as discussants. There is no reading for this event; please come prepared to listen and engage in conversation.

BWallaceSmall.jpg

2020-2021 - Nature, Space, and Politics III

Book discussion of Matilde Córdoba Azcárate's new book on Wednesday, May 12th from 10:00 a.m. - Noon (PDT) at this zoom link. We are delighted to invite you to join us for a lively virtual conversation in celebration of Dr. Matilde Córdoba Azcárate’s new book, Stuck with Tourism: Space, Power and Labor in Contemporary Yucatán (UC Press 2020) with the author and Drs. Bianet Castellanos, Chandra Mukerji, Mimi Sheller, and Manuel Xool Koh. With many thanks to our co-sponsors, the International Institute, Communication Department, Global Indigenous Peoples Group, Center for Iberian and Latin American Studies, the Latin American Studies Program, and the Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies.

MatildeBookDiscussion.jpg

Film screening of "Warrior Women" & interview with Madonna Thunder Hawk (Lakota leader) on Friday April 23rd, 2021 (3 p.m. - 5 p.m. PST @ zoom). We are honored to co-sporsor this event with the Global Indigenous People Faculty and Graduate Group, Communication Department, Institute of Arts And Humanities, Ethnic Studies, Native American and Indigenous Studies, and Green New Deal at UC San Diego.

 

Guest Speaker Brandon Hunter-Pazzara (Princeton University) on Wednesday, March 17th, 2021 (2 p.m. - 4 p.m. PST @zoom). We are honored to welcome Brandon Hunter-Pazzara, a fellow of the Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies at UC San Diego and a PhD Candidate in Anthropology at Princeton University, for a conversation about his work on algae blooms and labor organizing in the Maya Riviera. We have circulated through our mailing list readings as companions his talk. These readings included Bradon's draft paper, Wild Sargasso Sea, and as optional readings the introductory chapters from two recent ethnographies that have helped to shape his thinking: Penny McCall Howard's Environment, Labour and Capitalism at Sea and Juno Salazar Parreñas' Decolonizing Extinction.

 

 

Guest Speaker Prof. Manuel Shvartzberg Carrió (UC San Diego) on Wednesday, Feb 3rd, 2021 (2 p.m. - 4 p.m. PST @ zoom) -  Prof. Shvartzberg Carrió, Assistant Professor of Urban Studies and Planning, will be talking about his work Indigenous Design and Architecture in a seminar co-sponsored with the Global Indigenous Peoples Faculty and Graduate Research Group and organized by Nancy Postero.

 

Film Screening & Discussion on "The Strenght of Salt: Impact of Lithium Extraction on the Indigenous Communities of Salinas Grandes" (Argentina) on Friday Jan 29th, 2021  (10 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.PST @ zoom) - We are honored to co-sporsor this event with Latin American Studies Program, organized by Prof. Luis Martín-Cabrera. The event includes a documentary screening of "Kallapa Kachi" by Marina Ruiz, followed by discussion in Spanish with the filmaker and panelists. 

 

Guest Speaker Prof. Laura Pulido (University of Oregon) on Wednesday, Jan 20th, 2021 (2 p.m. - 3.30 p.m. PST@ zoom) -  We welcome Prof. Pulido, Collins Professor of Indigenous, Race, and Ethnic Studies and Geography at the University of Oregon, for a conversation about her work on Environmental Racism, Racial Capitalism, and Radical Ecologies. Prof. Pulido suggested the following readings as companions to her talk:
NSP-LauraPulido_Poster.jpeg

 

Guest Speaker Prof. Shelley Streeby (UC San Diego) on Wednesday Dec 9th, 2020 (2 p.m. - 3:30 p.m. PST @ zoom) - In December 2020, we were honored to welcome Prof. Shelley Streeby, Literature, UCSD, for a conversation about her most recent work Speculative Archives: Hidden Histories and Ecologies of Science Fiction World-Making (ACLS 2020-2021).

 

Utopianism of degrowth & Science Fiction Discussion on Wednesday Nov 4th, 2020 (2 p.m. - 3:30 p.m. PST @ zoom) - Reading and discussion of the utopianism of degrowth and science fiction engineering of new worlds. Readings are Kallis Girogios and Hug March, Imaginaries of Hope: The Utopianism of Degrowth (2014) and N.K. Jemisin's short story The City Born Great

2019-2020 - Nature, Space, and Politics II

Extrastatecraft Discussion on Friday Mar 6th, 2020 (12 a.m. - 2 p.m.PST @ Sequoyah Room 103) - We framed our discussion around selections of Keller Easterling's Extrastatecraft, primarily focusing on the Introduction and Chapter 6, with Chapters 3 & 5 as optional readings.

 

 

Guest Speaker Prof. Craig M. Kauffman (University of Oregon) on Friday Feb 28th, 2020 (12 a.m. - 2 p.m. @ Sequoyah Room 103) - In Feburary 2020, we had a joint discussion with the Indigenous Peoples of Latin America Group, bringing as our guest speaker Prof. Craig M. Kauffman, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Oregon and Member of United Nations Expert Network on Harmony with Nature.
  • Talk title: “The Relationship Between Indigenous Rights and Rights of Nature: Lessons from Ecuador and New Zealand.”
  • Abstract: Over the last decade, a growing number of countries have adopted legal provisions recognizing natural ecosystems as subjects with rights. In many cases, including Ecuador, Bolivia, and New Zealand, these laws resulted from Indigenous peoples’ struggles to change the way “development” is understood and practiced in their territories. Yet, many Indigenous peoples remain skeptical and wary of the concept of “rights of Nature,” which is a foreign concept that at best represents an imperfect attempt to translate Indigenous cosmovisions into Western legal systems. While some worry that rights of nature may conflict with indigenous rights, others see these rights as potentially inter-related and complementary. Dr. Kauffman examines the tension between Indigenous rights and rights of nature, and discusses how these tensions are being resolved through the application of rights of nature laws in Ecuador and New Zealand. 

 

Guest Speaker Prof. Boatema Boateng (UC San Diego) on Friday Jan 17th, 2020 (12 a.m. - 2 p.m. @ Sequoyah Room 103) -  Joint discussion with the Indigenous Peoples of Latin America Group with guest speaker Prof. Boatema Boateng, Communication Department, UC San Diego. Prof. Boateng shared with us her research on copyright and indigenous knowledges.

 

Extrativism/Neo-extrativism Discussion on Wednesday Nov 13th, 2019 (9:30 a.m. - 11:30 a.m. @ Sequoyah Room 103) - We framed our discussion around two readings: Introduction to Open Veins Revisited by Linda Farthing and Nicole Fabricant; Brazil in the International Rubber Trade, 1870–1930 by Zephyr Frank and Aldo Musacchio.

 

Prof. Marisol de la CadenaGuest Speaker Prof. Marisol de la Cadena (UC Davis) on Thursday Dec 5th, 2019 (4 p.m. - 6 p.m. @ Sequoyah Room 103) -  In December 2019, we invited  Prof. Marisol de la Cadena, author of Earth Beings (Duke), as our guest speaker. Marisol opened with some provocations to guide the group discussion, which was centered around two excerpts of Marisol's writing: Story 4 from Earth Beings, "Mariano's Archive: The Eventfulness of the Ahistorical"; and Chapter 1 from Anthropos and the Material, "Uncommoning Nature: Stories from the Anthropo-Not-Seen".

 

Carbon Democracy Discussion on Wednesday Oct 30th, 2019 (9:30 a.m. - 11:30 a.m. @ Sequoyah Room 103) - We framed our discussion around the Introduction and Chapter 1 of Timothy Mitchell's Carbon Democracy.

2018-2019 - Nature, Space, and Politics I

Diverse Ways of Knowing Nature Workshop 

In June 2019, we co-organized the workshop “Diverse Ways of Knowing Nature” together with the Indigenous Peoples of Latin America Group. This event brought together US scholars and graduate students, Latin American indigenous scholars, activists, and San Diego local artists in a day event where we discussed different philosophical understandings of nature and environmental justice, community-based responses to scientific understandings of nature-cultures and engaged in a hands-on experimental clay workshop with local artists Rudy Duran and Judith Parenio. See the Diverse Ways of Knowing Nature Workshop workshop program and participants' abstracts (PDF).

ALTERNATIVE-WAYS-OF-KNOWNIG-NATURE

2017-2018 - Cities, Space, and Politics

Urban Waterscapes Workshop 

In June 2018, we organized a day long workshop on “Urban Water scapes” (June 2018) where we brought three guest speakers (Prof. Irene Klaver, Prof. Stephanie Kane, and Prof. Kim de Wolff) and where several of the members of the group (Prof. Elana Zilberg, Prof. Matt Vitz, Prof. Ameeth Vijay, Prof. Matilde Cordoba Azcarate and graduate student Kevan Malone) shared their work in progress. The workshop included a field-trip component as a binational tour in the Tijuana-San Diego estuary led by Oscar Romo of Alter Terra. See the Urban Waterscapes workshop program and participants' abstracts (PDF).