Critical disaster studies is an emergent interdisciplinary field in the social sciences and humanities. It takes as its starting point that the very category of disaster is constructed, a political distinction that designates some suffering as normal and some as abnormal.
Building on insights from long-standing disciplines like disaster risk reduction, disaster medicine and public health, emergency management, and various engineering fields that focus on decreasing seismic and flooding damage, critical disaster studies seeks humanistic and interpretive understandings of disaster as a phenomenon and discourse embedded in culture and society.
Critical disaster studies is inherently interdisciplinary and draws from the history, sociology, and anthropology of disaster as well as environmental studies, urban studies, development studies, and science and technology studies. To the extent it is applied, its applications are from the bottom up; we aspire to understand the experience and politics of people who are most at risk, and to foster and contribute to their efforts to build more just, equal, and safe communities.
Directed by Professor Jacob A.C. Remes, the Initiative for Critical Disaster Studies at NYU Gallatin seeks to foster this emergent field both within NYU and in the broader academy. At NYU and in New York City, we encourage the critical study of disaster through events, courses, and graduate studies. We host listings of calls for papers, events, and other resources for the benefit of critical disaster scholars everywhere.