EcoFeminist Fridays: towards slow academia

• In Event: COMPOSTING Feminisms and Environmental Humanities 3: Pedagogies

Abstract

EcoFeminist Fridays is a weekly, two-hour, ‘read-in’ session made up of artists and scholars committed to traversing the texts that make up the histories of critical ecological feminist thought and action. The structure of the group is simple: we sit and read aloud together, as a collective.
This group was started in response to two experiences of fragmentation that seem common within the academic setting. The first comes from the expected acceleration of “knowledge production”, which is compounded by the casualisation of work and lack of dependable practical resources (such as desk space, computer, book shelf or locker) offered by universities. The concretion of these experiences seemed to amplify the kind of environment that produces what Deborah Bird Rose has described as “disengaged and fragmented forms of knowledge.” (‘Slowly’ 2013) The second experience was the desire to turn to a community with a shared body of critical ecological feminist knowledge, but not knowing where that community resided.
This group was started to provide a physical and imaginative space for a community to gather. It now acts as a kind of refuge in which the words of critical ecological feminist to be read aloud and heard. It pushes against the frenetic pace of its surrounding academic setting with slow, emergent and collective modes of learning.
In this paper I reflect on the experiences that emerged from the first year of reading sessions. I will discuss the 2017/2018 reading lists, and the projected program of public ‘read-ins’ from the perspective of composting feminisms.

Author

• Hayley Singer, University of Melbourne