Program

Friday, October 21 | Saturday, October 22

Friday, October 21

9:30-10:30AM Breakfast & Opening Remarks (3222 Angell Hall)

* Food is located in 3241 Angell Hall

10:30AM-12PM: Morning Session

Panel 1A: Imagining Climate Justice (3222 Angell Hall)

Moderator: Allison Caine, University of Michigan, Socio-Cultural Anthropology

Laura Aguirre, Florida International University, English

“We Will March With Wet Feet: Caribbean Subjectivities in an Era of Climate Change”

Gabby Benavente, Florida International University, English

“Reimagining Objectivist Toxicity: Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Talents and the Dismantling of White Supremacy, Heteropatriarchy, and Nationalism Through Community”

Finn McLafferty Bell, University of Michigan, Social Work and Sociology

“Real Utopias in a Dystopian Futurity: Queering Alternative Economies”

Panel 1B: Environmental Encounters: Materiality, Sexuality, and Embodiment (3512 Haven Hall)

Moderator: Dr. Amy Sara Carroll, University of Michigan, English and American Culture

Emma Brush, University of Chicago, English

“Bodies like his do not kill bodies like hers’: Toxicity and the ‘contact zone’ in Rebecca West’s ‘Indissoluble Matrimony’”

Adam Syvertsen, DePaul University, English

“Using ‘Trans-Corporeality’ to Read Corporeal Entanglements in the Poetry of Walt Whitman”

Emma DiPasquale, West Virginia University, English

“Discovery in the Unnatural: Problematizing Perceptions of ‘Queer’ in Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home”

12-1:30PM: Lunch

* Food is located in 3241 Angell Hall

* Fresh coffee will be available at 1:45PM, before the start of our afternoon panels!

12:30-1:30PM

Private Event: Lunch Workshop with Julie Sze (3184 Angell Hall)

1:45-3:15PM: Afternoon Session

Panel 2A: The Toxic and the Pristine: Reading Urban Landscapes

(3222 Angell Hall)

Moderator: Dr. Susan Scott Parrish, University of Michigan, English and the Program in the Environment

Stephine Hunt, SUNY Fredonia, English

“The Natural Urban Landscape in Terry Tempest Williams’s Refuge”

Nicole Bennett, CSU Long Beach, English

“‘Maintenance Is the Problem’: Cleaning as a Critical Reading Model in Tropic of Orange”

Anna-Lena Glesinski, University of Hamburg, Romance Languages and Literatures

“Living ToxiCity – Urban Dystopia in the Novels of Mexican Writer and Environmental Activist Homero Aridjis”

Panel 2B: Contagion and Contamination: Health and the Inheritances of Environmental Racism (3512 Haven Hall)

Moderator: Crystal Yin Lie, University of Michigan, English Language and Literature

Kira Dallaire, Eastern Michigan University, Special Education

“The Flint Water Crisis through a Critical Disability Studies Lens”

Allyse Knox-Russell, Stony Brook University, Women’s Studies

“Displacing Toxicity in Eula Biss’s On Immunity: An Inoculation”

Catherine Fairfield, University of Michigan, English and Women’s Studies

“Constructing Crisis in Flint, Michigan: Reproductive Justice and the Politics of Containment and Disposability”

3:15-3:30PM: Break

3:30-5PM: Keynote

“Toxic Masculinity/Toxic Land: Navajo Anticolonialism in

Drunktown’s Finest” by John Gamber (Columbia University, Assistant Professor of English and Comparative Literature)

Location: 3222 Angell Hall

Moderator: Mika Kennedy, University of Michigan, English Language and Literature 

5-5:15PM: Break

5:15PM-5:45PM: The Imprudent Cartography of Thought: Performing Borders in Dance (North Quad Space 2435)

Moderators: Mika Kennedy & Mary Renda

Patricia Lorena Solórzano (University of Michigan, MFA) & Efrén Cruz Cortés (University of Michigan, Electrical Engineering)

5:45PM Graduate Student Social (North Quad Space 2435)

* Light refreshments provided

How to Get to North Quad Space 2435

Exit Angell Hall from its main entrance. This will put you on State Street, which extends north-south.

Walk north on State Street. You will pass by a commercial section of State Street; keep walking.

The entrance to Space 2435 is located on State Street, between E. Washington and E. Huron (both of which intersect state street, and extend east-west).

Inside, you will find yourself in an entryway. Turn right and walk past a stairwell leading downward. On your right, you will find the main entrance to Space 2435.

---

Saturday, October 22

8:30-9:30AM: Breakfast

* Food is located in 3241 Angell Hall

9:30AM-11AM: Morning Session

Panel 3A: Global Representations of Extraction, Colonization, and

Human Disposability (3222 Angell Hall)

Moderator: Mika Kennedy, University of Michigan, English Language & Literature

Mary Renda, University of Michigan, Romance Languages and Literatures

“Empire as the Cleansing of Contamination: Heteropatriarchy and Natural Resource Extraction in the Andes”

Katherine Hummel, University of Michigan, English

“Toxic Entanglements: Exposing Opium’s Violent Agency in Amitav Ghosh’s Sea of Poppies”

Kesha Fevrier, York University, Environmental Studies

“Symbolic Devaluation and the Fleshy Excess of Black Life”

Panel 3B: Interrogating Toxicity: Displacement, Diaspora, and States of Abjection (3512 Haven Hall)

Moderator: Sunhay You, University of Michigan, English and Women’s Studies

Peggy Lee, University of Michigan, American Culture

“Diasporic Dirt: Illness and Orientalism in Nami Mun’s ‘Miles from Nowhere’”

Kelly McKisson, Portland State University, English

“Poisoning Life in Animal’s People”

Elizabeth Harlow, University of Michigan, English

“A Case Study in Metaphors of Nation and Globalization: Reading Bedbugs in Teju Cole’s Open City”

11-11:15AM: Break

11:15-12:45PM: Keynote

“Violence and Environmental Racism”

Julie Sze, University of California, Davis (Professor of American Studies)

Location: 3222 Angell Hall

Moderator: Mika Kennedy, University of Michigan, English Language and Literature

12:45-2PM Lunch

* Food is located in 3241 Angell Hall

* Fresh coffee will be available at 1:45PM, before the start of our afternoon panels!

1:00-2PM: Private Event

Lunch Workshop with John Gamber (3154 Angell Hall)

2-3:30PM: Afternoon Sessions

Panel 4A: The Bordered World: Race, Nation, and Temporality (3222 Angell Hall)

Moderator: Dr. Elizabeth Barrios, Albion College, Latinx and Transatlantic Studies

Jorge Enrique Cartaya, Florida International University, English

“Toward an Ethics of Acknowledgment: Breaching Toxic Myths of a Post-Racial World”

Lauren A. Darnell, University of Michigan, Romance Languages and Literatures

“Pestilent Practices and Imperial Bodies: Racial Thinking in Guamán Poma’s Nueva crónica y buen gobierno”

Emelia Abbé, University of Michigan, English

“The Borderline is Out of Joint: Toxic Modernities and Temporal Collapse in Américo Paredes’s George Washington Gómez”

Panel 4B: Latinx Borderlands, Immigration, and Environmental Justice (3512 Haven Hall)

Moderator: Orquidea Morales, University of Michigan, American Culture

Emily Celeste Vazquez Enriquez, Cornell University, Romance Studies

“Socio-ecological representations of the southern Mexican border in La fila india, by Antonio Ortuño”

Shane Donnelly Hall, University of Oregon, Environmental Studies

“The Funnel Effect” as Environmental Warfare: Capturing the Fugitive Agency of the Borderlands in Urrea’s The Devil’s Highway”

Maritza Y. Duran, University of Michigan, Social Work

“The Hands and Hearts that Feed the United States”

3:30-4:00PM: Break

4:00-6:15PM: Environmental Justice Activisms Roundtable

Location: 3222 Angell Hall
Moderator: Mary Renda, Romance Languages and Literatures

Michelle Martinez, Southwest Detroit Activist
Melvin Parson, Owner of We The People Growers Association
Nayyirah Shariff, Flint Rising Director
Laura MacIntyre, Flint Rising Activist and Member of Flint Mom Power Group
Noor Ahmad, Earth First Activist

* Light refreshments provided

6:30-8:00PM Closing Reception (3222 Angell Hall)

* Food is located in 3241 Angell Hall