Events

PIGOTT HALL (BUILDING 260), ROOM 216 We are thrilled to anounce that we will be discussing new extractivisms for our first meeting of the term 2019-2020. We will base our discussion on Verónica Gago and Sandro Mezzadra's article "A Critique of the Extractive Operations of Capital: Toward an Expanded Concept of Extractivism". The meeting will […]

PIGOTT HALL (B260, RM. 216) On Monday, November 4th at 5:45pm we will be joined by Professor Micah Donohue (ENMU) and by Professor Tom McEnaney (UC Berkeley). The theme of this upcoming event will be "Borders & Technology". Professors Donohue and McEnaney have shared the following descriptions of their talks: Micah Donohue (ENMU) “Between the […]

We are pleased to announce on Monday, February 24, 2020 at 6 pm we will be joined by Professors Chad Wellmon (German Studies, University of Virginia) and Justin Read (Spanish and Portuguese, University at Buffalo) for a session about knowledge, search, and the self-actualization of technology. The theme of this upcoming event will be Asynchronous Avant-gardes. Professors Wellmon and Read […]

PIGOT HALL (B260), ROOM 216. We are pleased to announce that on Monday, January 27th at 6pm we will be joined by Juan Esteban Plaza (Iberian and Latin American Cultures) and Jason Beckman (East Asian Languages and Cultures) for a discussion on their ongoing research. The theme of this upcoming event will be Secrecy and […]

On Monday, May 11th at 5pm, doctoral candidates Daniel Hernández (ILAC, Stanford) and Sebastián Figueroa (Hispanic and Portuguese Studies, UPenn) will be discussing their research in progress and leading our discussion on the theme of Post-Naturalist Fictions: Representations of Capital and Forest in Colombia and Brazil. Presenters have kindly shared the following descriptions of their […]

We are thrilled to announce that materia's sixth year will kick off with a discussion on Money & War led by PhD Candidates Colin Drumm (History of Consciousness, UC Santa Cruz) and Harleen Kaur Bagga (Art History, Stanford). Colin and Harleen have shared the following descriptions of their brief talks: Drumm (History of Consciousness, UC […]

María del Rosario Acosta López (UC Riverside) "Grammars of Listening as Decolonial Grammars: Notes for a Decolonization of Memory" This talk engages in a self-critical reflection on the limits and decolonial potential of the project advanced by the author and entitled ‘grammars of listening’. In the first part, the author explores the theoretical context that […]

Valeria Meiller (Spanish and Portuguese, Georgetown) "Matadero Modelo: Argentine Rural Modernity Seen Through The Slaughterhouse” This work is an examination of the slaughterhouses built by the architect Francisco Salamone in the 1930s as spaces that hold valuable answers to how the meat industry helped shape a nation known worldwide for its meat production and steak […]

What happens when toxicity breaks through its spatial containment? How can a virus contaminate spheres, bodies, media, places and landscapes? How do parasites, viruses or toxins penetrate, subvert, destabilize and/or promote and establish power structures and economic paradigms? In this workshop, Gisela Heffes & Arndt Niebisch address these questions and highlight how the politics of […]

The Forgotten History of Operative Writing: Women's Contributions to Digital Literacy Sybille Krämer (Aesthetics and Culture of Digital Media, Leuphana University) with respondent Hank Gerba (Art & Art History, Stanford) What does writing mean, what does 'script' mean? Within the framework of the Western alphabetic form of literacy, the answer is usually: writing is fixed […]

We are pleased to announce that our next gathering will be held on Thursday, May 13 and will feature Jameelah Morris (Anthropology, Stanford) and Reagan Ross (Communication, Stanford). Our guest speakers have kindly shared the following description of their talks: Jameelah Morris (Anthropology, Stanford) - "No innocence to be found: On Gendered Anti-black Violence against Black Youth" In this presentation, […]

In her talk "The Inhuman and the Anarchist: Rafael Barrett’s Anthropodecentric Writings," Prof. Jennifer French (Williams College) will be continuing her exploration of the Hispano-Paraguayan anarchist Rafael Barrett (1876-1910) by focusing specifically on the anthropodecentric aspects of his writing. A pre-circulated paper by French on Barrett will provide an overview of his work, specifically his best-known […]

Our second Fall event featured McKenzie Wark (Media and Culture, Eugene Lang College, The New School) in conversation with Orlando Bentancor (Spanish and Latin American Cultures, Barnard College). McKenzie Wark is the author of, among other things, Molecular Red (Verso 2015) and Philosophy for Spiders: On the Low Theory of Kathy Acker (Duke UP 2021). Prof. Wark delivered a talk titled "Non-Politics and Non-Ecologies." Orlando Bentancor […]

Our third and last event of the Fall quarter featured Mary J. Weismantel (Anthropology, Northwestern University) and Peruvian artist Sandra Gamarra. Our speakers will discussed Weismantel's new book Playing with Things: Engaging the Moche Sex Pots (University of Texas Press, 2021) in connection with Gamarra's artistic work on Indigenous objects. The event, co-sponsored by the Department of Art and Art History and the Stanford Archaeology Center, will take place TODAY, […]

Our first event of the Winter quarter featured historian Thomas Moynihan (author of X-Risk (Urbanomic/MIT Press 2020) and Spinal Catastrophism (Urbanomic/MIT Press, 2019), among others) and artist Carolina Caycedo (2020-2022 Inaugural Borderlands Fellow at the Center for Imagination in the Borderlands-Arizona State University and the Vera List Center for Art and Politics; recent and upcoming solo shows include: Care Report at Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź, Wanaawna, Rio Hondo and […]