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
“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