Geologics Symposium

Geologics: Comparative Epistemologies of the Earth

December 7-8, 2018

Rhode Island Hall, room 108, Brown University

This symposium explores “geologics”: systems of thought that have accounted for the relation between humans and what modern scientists consider geological features (caves, volcanos) and geomorphological processes (weathering, erosion, deposition). Bringing together an interdisciplinary group of scholars, we mobilize the insights of the literary and visual arts, archaeology, anthropology, and history to excavate deep histories and sculpt speculative futures of the earth.

Sponsored by the Program in Early Cultures, Hsiao Family Fund and Joseph Edinburg Fund in the History of Art and Architecture Department, Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World, Cogut Institute for the Humanities, and Brown Arts Initiative.

Papers and Participants

Abstracts and Program

“Upon this rock”: Medieval Attitudes to Geology 
Sheila Bonde, Brown University

Geologic Intimacy/Physical Geology: A core sample from a geologic art practice
Ilana Halperin

The Cup of Time: Fossils, Beds and “Photography” in the Early Anthropocene
Matthew Hunter, McGill University

What is Bedrock? Geo-Logics of Community in the Indigenous Highland Andes (Cusco, Peru)
Steven Kosiba, University of Minnesota 

Revelatory Sculpting: Three Iterations of a Chinese Geoaesthetic
Jeffrey Moser, Brown University

Sand-Spitting Stones and Blue-Green Soils: Mesoamerican Geologics
Sarah Newman, University of Vermont

Thinking with Mountain-People
Felipe Rojas, Brown University

Picture-Rhythms of Mixing Rivers, Termite Mountains, and the Repeating Earth 
Holly Shaffer, Brown University

Snail Cinema: Ecologies of Poetic Forms of Attention in the Chthulucene
Ada Smailbegović, Brown University

Continent in Dust: China in Aerosol Phases
Jerry Zee, UCSC