News

Upcoming International Conference: “Narratives of the Sociotechnical”
materia International Symposium Date: Friday, May 5th 9am-5pm; Saturday, May 6th 9am-12:30pm, 2023 Place: Bolívar House (Center for Latin American Studies),...
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Literatures of Planetary Thresholds: Watch!
"Literatures of planetary thresholds", our last event of the Fall quarter 2022, focused on the role of literature and...
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Framing Law & Humanities (Day 2): Watch!
"The Rights of Nature and the Imagination," the second session of the two-day event "Framing Law and Humanities in/from...
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Framing Law & Humanities (Day 1): Watch!
The first session of the two-day event "Framing Law & Humanities in/from the Global South" entailed a four-speaker roundtable,...
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Extraction & Extinction: Watch!
Thomas Moynihan (historian) and Carolina Caycedo (artist) discussed the relationship between extraction and extinction in connection with the notion...
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Engaging the Moche Sex Pots: Watch!
Our last event of the Fall quarter 2021 took place on November 16, 2021 via Zoom featuring Mary J....
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Non-Politics & Non-Ecologies: Watch!
This event took place on November 4, 2021 and featured McKenzie Wark (Media and Culture, The New School) in...
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Here you can check all our past events and new events this month.
Testimonials
materia is a futurist space where bright people explore the Zeitgeist from a world-utopia standpoint. This quarter, we have looked at everything from Chilean disaster poetry to NASA’s golden disk and the cosmic narratives that it produces to stories about the ocean as having created the conditions for further ocean exploration. Never have I found myself having to refer to this-or-that canonical thinker, but rather seemed to work out of the “creative heart” […
Elias Samuel RimerUndergraduate Student - Comparative Literature BA '23
I have been a regular attendee to materia for the last three or four years, since the Research (now Focal) Unit relaunched its activity in 2017. As a student not previously engaged in (new) materialist approaches, materia has provided me with a unique space for in depth exploration of related lines of investigation and for bringing anthropocentric thinking to my own research.

Laura MenéndezPhD Candidate - Iberian and Latin American Cultures
So far, materia events have been some of the most interesting and engaging conversations I’ve experienced at Stanford […] It’s my first year, so I’m a little bit shy and just trying to get through my coursework, but I hope I’ll be able to become a more involved participant with materia over the next few years.

Matthew GilbertPhD Student - Department of Music
materia has allowed me to approach post-anthropocentric thought for the first time, not only from a literary or philosophical perspective but also from an artistic and material one. In this sense, materia gave me the opportunity to attend fascinating talks […] After my attendance I feel more prepared to understand material cultures from multiple and productive perspectives.

Òscar FerrerPhD Student - Iberian and Latin American Cultures