2022 Conference Program

Reception for the Mierle Laderman Ukeles Exhibition

“Mierle Laderman Ukeles: Chasing The Humming of Life” 

Roundtable Discussion with Professors Mohammed Rafi Arefin, Rosalind Fredericks, Nina Katchadourian, Eugenia Kisin, Keith Miller, and Robin Nagle.

*Due to unforeseen circumstances, Mierle Laderman Ukeles will not be able to join us today to provide the opening keynote.*

Welcome to the Discard Studies Conference 

Conference Organizers: Rosalind Fredericks, Mohammed Rafi Arefin, Robin Nagle

Keynote Lecture by Max Liboiron 

Associate Professor of Geography

Memorial University

Introduction: Robin Nagle (NYU)

Discussant: Josh Lepawsky (Memorial University)

Panel 1:  Bodies: Labor, Abjection, and Intimacy

     Moderator:  Karen Holmberg (NYU)

     Discussant:  Vyjayanthi Rao (Terreform)

     Panelists:   

Amy Zhang (NYU)

     4 Mystification: from dirty work to green labor: the political economy of recycling

Elana Resnick (University of California, Santa Barbara)

     Discard Studies, Scale, and the Racialized Anthropocene

Joshua Reno (State University of New York at Binghamton)

    Cacas Ergo Sum: Disability, Toileting and the Neglect of Abject Care Work in Discard
    Studies (and Beyond)

Katherine Sammler (California State University Maritime)

     An intimate space: Gravity, waste and the spatial orientation of bodies

Syantani Chatterjee (Columbia University)

     Chip Chip: Toward a Politics of Stickiness

Lunch

Panel 2: Infrastructures: Materiality, Value, and Circulation

    Moderator:  Louise Harpman (NYU)

    Discussant: Antina von Schnitzler (New School)

     Panelists:

Marisa Solomon (Barnard College)  

    Ecologies Elsewhere, or Becoming Fill

Nate Millington (University of Manchester)

    Whose Value Lies in the Urban Mine? Reconfiguring permissions, work and the
    benefits of waste in South Africa

Hanna Baumann (University College London)

    (Un)knowing toxicity: waste, value and indeterminacy through artistic engagements      with Lebanon’s coastal landfills

Waqas Butt (University of Toronto)

    Waste and Water: On Scales of Caring for Urban Ecologies

Nicholas C. Kawa (The Ohio State University)

    A Tactical Approach to Discard Studies? Thinking through Privy2

Panel 3:  The Urban Landscape: Demolition, Abandonment, and Belonging

     Moderator:  Gianpaolo Baiocchi (NYU) 

     Discussant:  Catherine Fennell (Columbia University)

     Panelists:

Carl A. Zimring (Pratt Institute) and Steven H. Corey (Columbia College Chicago)

     Wastescapes and the Building of Modern New York City: A Discard Studies Approach
    to Urban History

Dawn Biehler  (University of Maryland, Baltimore County)

     Racial capitalism, discarded spaces, and surplus beings in West Baltimore

Martin Murray and Maria Arquero de Alarcon (University of Michigan)

     Waste Lands and the Disposable City: The Afterlife of Three Distressed Neighborhoods in Detroit

Daniel Cumming (Johns Hopkins University)

    “All that is solid melts into air”: Burning Trash, ‘INCITE’-ing Black Power, and Embedding Risk in South Baltimore, 1961-1985

Raul Pacheco-Vega (Latin American Faculty for Social Sciences, Mexico)

      Governing discards by discarding governance? Expanding the role of informal
      waste pickers in municipal garbage management in Vancouver and Paris 

Break

Keynote Lecture by Brenda Chalfin

Professor of Anthropology; Director of the Center for African Studies

University of Florida

“Theorizing Discard Studies: Taking Arendt to the Toilet in Tema”

Introduction: Rosalind Fredericks (NYU)

Discussant:  Robyn d’Avignon (NYU)

Participant Cocktail Party

Panel 4: Management: Unruly Objects, Shifting States

     Moderator:  Jacob Remes (NYU)

     Discussant:  Andrea Marston (Rutgers University)

     Panelists:

Graham Mooney (Johns Hopkins University)

     A Trainload of Neoliberal Shit

Olivier Barsalou (Université du Québec à Montréal)

     Global Waste (Displacement) Law

Alex Souchen (Trent University)

    Underwater Munitions: Military Pollution and the Legacies of Disposal

Sven Bergmann and Philipp Grassel (German Maritime Museum)

     Speculative ecologies, temporalities and politics: Microplastics, TNT and other pollutants in the sea

Lily Baum Pollans (Hunter College)

     Deconstructing garbage in the weak recycling waste regime: resistance through
    radical reframing in Seattle

Panel 5: Capital: Waste-Value Dialectics

     Moderator: Sybil Cooksey (NYU)

     Discussant:  Asher Ghertner (Rutgers University)

     Panelists:

Dean Chahim (University of Texas at El Paso)

     The Logistics of Waste: Engineering, Capital Accumulation, and the Growth
    of Mexico City

Sophia Stamatopoulou-Robbins (Bard College)

  Decluttering and Partial Detachments: Airbnb through the Lens of Discard Studies

Rob Aitken (University of Alberta)

     The Afterlives of Global Capital

Aparna Parikh (Pennsylvania State University)

    Urban environmental Imaginaries and Aesthetic Sensibilities in Mumbai, India

Başak Saraç-Lesavre (University of Manchester)

  Disposing of nuclear waste in the depths of the Salado Formation, remaining valuable on the Earth’s surface

Keynote Lecture by Samantha MacBride

Baruch College, CUNY

“Composting Considered: Organics, Power, and Pragmatism in the U.S. Present Moment”

Introduction: Mohammed Rafi Arefin (University of British Columbia)

Discussant: Robin Nagle (NYU)

Optional Field trips for Participants 

Sims Material Recovery Facility (Brooklyn)

Newtown Creek Alliance (Brooklyn)

Manhattan 11 Garage (Mongo Museum) 

Manhattan 125 Garage