Anthropocene River Campus: The Human Delta
Synthesizing the braided research undertaken upriver by the five Anthropocene River Field Stations and tying it together with explorations in and around New Orleans, this one-week educational event presented a culmination of the year-long Mississippi. An Anthropocene River project. In collaboration with the New Orleans Center for the Gulf South (NOCGS) at Tulane University, a series of six field seminars and public programs provided a frame for learning about the historical legacies, social conditions, and ecological precarity of living and surviving in the Mississippi Delta.
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- projectMorgan Adamson, Ravi Agarwal, Bruce Braun, Geneva Lebouf, Sarah Lewison, Shana M. griffin, Pointe-Au-Chien Indian Tribe, Grace Treffinger
Seminar: Claims/Property
This seminar engages the complicated entanglements of property claims that cut across the social, racial, and ecological landscapes of the Mississippi Delta, as they pertain to the Anthropocene.
Case Study, Teaching, Agency, History, Local knowledge, Agriculture, Commodities, Capitalism, Violence, Race, Settler Colonialism, Environmental Justice
- projectBruce Sunpie Barnes, Amy Lesen, Catherine Russell, Scott Wing
Seminar: Clashing Temporalities
This seminar brings concepts of time, layers, and sediment into close contact with the human sciences, the arts, and Pierre Part, a community who live according to the movements of the River.
Case Study, Teaching, Time, Deep time, Adaptation, Agriculture, Biosphere, Evolution, Metabolism, Human-environment relations, Water, Waste, History, Sedimentation, Erosion
- projectScott Eustis, Beate Geissler, Nikos Katsikis, Oliver Sann, Ibrahima Seck, Benjamin Steininger, Thomas Turnbull
Seminar: Commodity Flows
The relations between extraction, synthesis, and exploitation, and the effects of commodity dependencies across scales are explored in this seminar, by mapping commodity flows and energy cycles in the Mississippi basin.
Case Study, Teaching, Commodities, Capitalism, Energy, Agriculture, Transportation, History, Economy, Race, Slavery, Plantation, Metabolism, Infrastructure, Cotton, Tobacco, Sugar Cane, Oil
- projectAdam Crosson, Kristine L. DeLong, Monica Moses Haller, Albertine Kimble, Joshua Lewis, Matt Rahaim, Matt Sakakeeny, Simon Turner, Monique Verdin
Seminar: Exhaustion and Imagination
Focusing on the limits—and opportunities—exhaustion engenders, in this seminar the difficulties of being out of energy and out of ideas will be related to the challenges posed by the Anthropocene.
Case Study, Teaching, Future, Imaginary, Time, Degradation, Affect, Ethics, Epistemology, Engagement, Extinction, Environmental Justice, Species, Speculative
- projectFallon Samuels Aidoo, Myung Ae Choi, Daneeta Loretta Jackson, Scott Gabriel Knowles, Louisiana Landmarks Society (LLS), Wendi Moore O'Neal, Christopher Oliver, Marylee Orr, Michael Orr, Buhm Soon Park, Wilma Subra, Jeffrey Treffinger
Seminar: Risk/Equity
The articulation of risk assessment and management as being at the heart of environmental justice is the focus of this seminar, which explores the paired concepts of risk and equity through lived experiences.
Case Study, Teaching, Disaster, Ethics, Capitalism, Care, Participatory governance, Violence, Environmental Justice, Risk, Inequality
- projectAron Chang, Jelagat Cheruiyot, Greta Gladney, Richard Hindle, Derek Hoeferlin, Tanya James, Cyndhia Ramatchandirane, Jorg Sieweke, Nikiwe Solomon
Seminar: Un/bounded Engineering and Evolutionary Stability
The role of engineering river systems toward human aims and the consequences this has on multiple scales is the key concern of this seminar.
Case Study, Teaching, Engineering, Evolution, Human-environment relations, Infrastructure, Complexity, Ecology, Disaster, Technoscience, Technosphere, Risk, Sedimentation
- contribution
Anthropocene River Campus: Opening Plenary
A collection of statements from the Opening Plenary of the Anthropocene River Campus, 2019.
Film, Engagement, Teaching
- contribution
Anthropocene River Campus: Report Plenary I
Critical insights into the plenary on the work of the seminars “Clashing Temporalities”, “Risk/Equity” and “Exhaustion and Imagination” of the Anthropocene River Campus, 2019.
Reflection, Film, Teaching, Engagement
- contributionAmy Lesen, Catherine Russell, Thomas Turnbull
Interview: Clashing Temporalities
In this interview, Thomas Turnbull, Catherine Russell and Amy Lesen discuss their research perspectives on “Clashing Temporalities,” which was the topic of a seminar taking place within the framework of the Anthropocene River Campus, 2019.
Conversation, Reflection
- contributionScott Eustis, Beate Geissler, Benjamin Steininger
Interview: Commodity Flows
In this interview, Beate Geissler, Scott Eustis and Benjamin Steininger discuss their research perspectives on “Commodity Flows,” which was the topic of a seminar taking place within the framework of the Anthropocene River Campus, 2019.
Conversation, Reflection
- contributionMonica Moses Haller, Monique Verdin
Interview: Exhaustion and Imagination
How could the exhausted landscapes and ways of living of the Mississippi Delta be approached by learning to trust in sources of collective imagination?
Conversation, Reflection
- contributionAron Chang, Jelagat Cheruiyot, Jorg Sieweke
Interview: Un/bounded Engineering and Evolutionary Stability
In this interview, Dorothy Cheruiyot, Aron Chang and Jorg Sieweke discuss their research perspectives on “(Un)bounded Engineering and Evolutionary Stability,” which was the topic of a seminar taking place within the framework of the Anthropocene River Campus, 2019.
Conversation, Reflection
- contributionJamie Allen
Femininity, Fecundity, Flow
Jamie Allen’s “river reflection” on the intimate forces, unflappable momentums, and generous flows that accompanied the launch of a river journey.
Field Work, Reflection, Storytelling, Care, Water, Perception
- contributionEleonora Rohland
Arriving in the Anthropocene: 300 years of adaptation to hurricanes and Mississippi floods in New Orleans
In keeping with many of the themes underpinning the Anthropocene River Campus, Eleonora Rohland explains how the question of adaptation so present post-Katrina has a much longer history in NOLA.
Case Study, Reflection, Adaptation, Urbanism, Engineering, Settler Colonialism
- contributionAndrew Gustin, Temporary continent.
Enter Anthropocene: Searching for signal in New Orleans
Despite this quest to identify a formally recognized boundary, perhaps uncertainty is the most effective means of furthering societal recognition of the complexities of human impact.
Conversation, Reflection, Field Work, Stratigraphy, Deep time, Complexity, Human-environment relations, Sedimentation
- contributionFlavio D’Abramo
Oysters, Selective Pressures, and Antibiotic Resistance in the Mississippi Delta
In addition to its position as a pillar of New Orleans cuisine, the humble oyster has also taken on another, more troubling role—serving as an indicator of water contamination in the Mississippi River Delta and the Lousiana Gulf.
Case Study, Modeling, Field Work, Biosphere, Water, Pollution, Species
- contributionNikos Katsikis
The Mississippi Basin: An Operational Landscape
Architect and urbanist Nikos Katsikis describes the assemblage of “operational landscapes” that are tied to the Mississippi basin.
Mapping, Case Study, Modeling, Agriculture, Commodities, Infrastructure, Transportation, Urbanism
