COMPOSTING Feminisms and Environmental Humanities 1: Decolonising Naturecultures

Session Submission Type: Open Panel

Abstract

Imagine the process of reading and writing as composting. Matters break down and re-emerge as new matters. In the spirit of a feminist politics of citation, how might we attune ourselves to the ways in which new ideas are always indebted to writings, readings and practices that have come before? What and how are feminist genealogies composted in and through the Environmental Humanities? What concepts are especially fruitful, and why? In what forms do these ideas re-emerge? How are these genealogies acknowledged? What ideas are yet to be added to the Science and Technology Studies (STS) compost pile?

Composting, as a feminist practice, has been taken up by a University of Sydney-based reading and research group of cross-institutional, trans-disciplinary scholars exploring the traces, legacies and intersections between inclusive feminisms and broad Environmental Humanities. Started by Dr Astrida Neimanis and Dr Jennifer Mae Hamilton in September 2015, the Composting Feminisms and Environmental Humanities group wishes to connect with transnational composting kin through this open panel at 4S. STS & Environmental Humanities share many key feminist interlocutors and this panel is an opportunity for discussion of similarities and differences.

Sub Unit

• Papers for Open Panels / Composting Feminisms & Environmental Humanities

Chair

• Susanne Pratt, University of Technology, Sydney

Discussant

• Jennifer Mae Hamilton, Unversity of New England

Individual Presentations

• Can untangling globalised plant stories help us to compost and compose decolonisation? - Emily Crawford, Composting Feminism

• Valetudo: a cultural anti-venom approach - Nancy Mauro-Flude, RMIT

• Ecological perceptions: new growth from the soil of environmental knowledges in Oceania - Rachel Morgain, Fenner School of Environment and Society: Australian National University

• Placenta To Go: Transcultural Birth Practices and Embodied Ecologies - Kara E Miller, California State University, Long Beach

Session Organizer

• Lindsay Kelley, UNSW Art & Design