The Dirt
Discard Studies is a young field of research that takes systems of waste and wasting as its topic of study, including but beyond conventional notions of trash and garbage. To keep practitioners up-to-date, Discard Studies publishes The Dirt, a monthly compilation of recent publications, positions, opportunities, and calls for proposals in the field. Here is The Dirt for November 2021.
Recent Discard Studies Posts
- Sorting It Out: Sustainability in Higher Education by Kathy Zhang
- Acts of Occlusion by Korede Akinkunmi
- Discard Studies Staffing Changes
- Copyright on the Farm by MC Forelle
- Reading Lists: Residential Schools
Peer-reviewed Articles & Books
Note: If an article is behind a paywall, email the author. They are almost always authorized by copyright to distribute their own work.
We have begun posting the gender parity of The Dirt, especially given evidence that COVID-19 is increasing the skew in knowledge production to be ever more male, white, and childless. This bibliography is about 44.34% percent women-authored based on the Summers Gender Balance Assessment Tool.
- Barua, Maan. 2021. Infrastructure and non-human life: A wider ontology. Progress in Human Geography 45(6):1467-1489. Keywords: biopower, infrastructure, mobility, more-than-human, ontology, urban ecology
- Chung, Seungmi, Kim, Kun Hee, Park, Yeseul, & Kim, Hyomin. 2021. A Site of Bounded Imaginaries: Local Narratives of Buan after Protests against a Nuclear Waste Repository. East Asian Science, Technology and Society: An International Journal 15(3):354-376. Keywords: nuclear waste, social network analysis, sociotechnical imaginaries, local knowledge
- Dave, Naisargi. N., & Gupta, Alok Hisarwala. 2021. The permissible and the perverse: Indian geographies of interspecies sex. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, October. Keywords: sex, animals, India, queer theory, feminism
- Dunlop, Catherine Tatiana. 2021. Losing an Archive: Doing Place-Based History in the Age of the Anthropocene. American Historical Review 126(3):1143-1153. Keywords: climate, environment, landscape, GIS, geography, geology, Europe, Mediterranean
- Ephraim, Laura. 2021. Save the Appearances! Toward an Arendtian Environmental Politics. American Political Science Review (November), 1-13.
- Glad, Wiktoria. 2021. Laundry power and care: Relational materialism, temporalities and spatialisation of communal laundering. Geoforum 127 (December), p171-179. Keywords: communal laundering, care, power, Sweden, relational materialism, space
- Griffiths, David Andrew. 2021. Queering the Moment of Hypospadias “Repair.” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 27(4):499-523. Keywords: intersex, hypospadias, queer theory, temporality, queer time, surgery
- Hegde, Radha Sarma. 2021. Pathogens, Precarity, and Digital Politics of Exclusion. Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience, 7(2):1-9. Keywords: pandemic, infrastructure, precarity, exclusion, elision
- Hollin, Gregory, & Giraud, Eva Haifa. 2021. Estranged companions: Bed bugs, biologies, and affective histories. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, October. Keywords: companion species, estrangement, DDT, insects, more-than-human geography
- Jafri, Beenash. 2021. Reframing Suicide: Queer Diasporic and Indigenous Imaginaries. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 27(4):577-602. Keywords: race, diaspora, Indigeneity, colonialism, film, suicide
- Johansson, Nils. 2021. Does the EU’s Action Plan for a Circular Economy Challenge the Linear Economy? Environmental Science & Technology 55(22):15001–15003. Keywords: natural resources, sustainability, climate, extraction, materials
- Lin, Zo., & Chao, En-Chieh. 2021. Weeds are Herbs: Botanic Arts of Foraging, Classifying, and Cooking. East Asian Science, Technology and Society: An International Journal 15(3):391-394.
- Luna, Jessie, Hernandez, Becca Chalit, & Sawadogo, Abdoulaye. 2021. The paradoxes of purity in organic agriculture in Burkina Faso. Geoforum 127 (December), 46-56. Keywords: cotton, organic certification, inverted quarantine, global race theory, whiteness, West Africa
- Morrison, Susan Signe. 2021. Waste. The Cambridge Companion to Environmental Humanities, edited by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen and Stephanie Foote. Cambridge University Press, p229-242.
- Ngata, Tina, & Liboiron, Max. 2021. A Māori Approach to Starting Research from Where You Are. Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience, 7(2).
- Pohl, Lucas. 2021. Ruins as pieces of the Real: Images of a post-apocalyptic present. Geoforum 127 (December), 198-208. Keywords:
apocalypse, image, the real, fantasy, ruin porn, Detroit
- Sandlos, John & Arn Keeling. 2021. Mining Country: A History of Canada’s Mines and Miners. Toronto, ON: Lorimer and Company Ltd.
- Schmidt, Jeremy. J. 2021. Glacial Deaths, Geologic Extinction. Environmental Humanities 13(2):281-300. Keywords: extinction, glacier, geology, Anthropocene, ice, loss, Stengers
- Simm, David, Marvell, Alan, & Mellor, Alexia. 2021. Teaching “Wicked” Problems in Geography. Journal of Geography in Higher Education 45(4):479-490.
- Solomon, Marisa., & Wool, Zoe. 2021. Waste is Not a Metaphor for Racist Dispossession: The Black Feminist Marxism of Marisa Solomon. Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience, 7(2).
- Sultana, Farhana. 2021. Climate change, COVID-19, and the co-production of injustices: a feminist reading of overlapping crises. Social & Cultural Geography 22(4):447-460. Keywords: climate change, covid-19, pandemic, intersectionality, injustice
- Unnikrishnan, Hita & Nagendra, Harini. 2021. Building climate resilient cities in the global South: assessing city adaptation plans in India. The Round Table 110(5):575-586. Keywords: climate action plans, India, discourse analysis, climate urbanism
Reviews
- The Whites Are Enemies of Heaven: Climate Caucasianism and Asian Ecological Protection; Mark Driscoll, Duke University Press // Reviewed by Kenneth Kai-chung Yung
- Russian Energy Chains: The Remaking of Technopolitics from Siberia to Ukraine to the European Union; Margarita Mercedes Balmaceda, Columbia University Press // Reviewed by Motria Caudill
- Materializing Difference: Consumer Culture, Politics, and Ethnicity among Romanian Roma; Péter Berta, University of Toronto Press // Reviewed by Yulia Karpova
Audio/Visual/Mixed Media
- Uninvited: The Spread of Invasive Species — New York State Department of Environmental Conservation documentary
- Environmental Casteism — Race & Health podcast; University College London
- The Repair — Season 5, Scene on Radio podcast
- Mould — Architecture after Architecture: Spatial Practice in the Face of the Climate Emergency podcast
- Plastic: The Biography — BBC Radio 4 podcast
New Waste Network
- Wastes Pollutants Toxicities (website to come!)
New Climate Collaborative
- Architecture After Architecture, by Mould; University of the Arts, London
Special Issue
- Our Shared Planet — American Studies Journal double issue. Webinar discussion with the editors: Tuesday, 30 November
Calls for Papers/Submissions
- Political Ecologies of Pesticides — Session proposal for Dimensions of Political Ecologies (DOPE) 2022 Conference, March 24-26; CFP deadline 10 December
- BHC Doctoral Colloquium on Business History, April 6-7; location to be confirmed. Application deadline 10 December.
- Change and Continuity in America’s Estuary — Chesapeake Studies 2022 Conference, Salisbury University, Maryland; June 1-3; CFP deadline 16 December
- Urban Waste, Presents and Futures — Metropolitics special series; deadline 3 January
- Time to Chat? Oral History as Conversation — Oral History in the Mid-Atlantic Region Annual Conference, April 29-30; CFP deadline 15 January
- Mapping Bodies — International Association for the Study of Environment, Space and Place 17th Annual Conference, Loyola University, Chicago; April 22-24; Jason Hayob-Matzke (jmatzke@umw.edu), contact; CFP deadline 15 February
- archipelagos: a journal of Caribbean digital praxis: open call for papers, proposals, projects; CFP deadline 15 February
- Watersheds — Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment Symposium, University of Delaware; June 22-24; CFP deadline 28 February
- Right to the Discipline Grants 2022 — Antipode Foundation; application deadline 28 February
Conferences & Symposia
- Should the EU Ban All Exports of Its Waste? #ZeroWasteCities Webinar, 7 December, 2:00 CET
- Oral History & Digital Humanities Academy, Global Institute for Research, Education & Scholarship; various dates
Positions
- Postdoctoral Fellowship, Science & Technology Studies; Department of Humanities, Social Sciences, & the Arts, Harvey Mudd College, Claremont, CA; deadline 30 November
- Postdoctoral Fellowship, Critical Digital Humanities (focus on Labour); Jackman Humanities Institute, University of Toronto; deadline 30 November
- Various Positions, Zero Waste Europe; application deadlines vary
- Assistant Professor, School of Public Health and Social Policy, University of Victoria; applicant must be an Indigenous person; deadline 7 January.
- Assistant Professor, Climate Justice; University of California-San Diego. Next application review: 15 December. Final deadline: 31 January.
- Assistant Professor, History of Science/Technology/Medicine; University of Pennsylvania; deadline 20 December
- Associate Professor, Human Geography; Norwegian University of Science and Technology; deadline 9 January
- Distinguished Professor, Political Science & Public Administration; University of North Carolina; application review starts 15 January
- Associate or Full Professor, Design; University of Texas at Austin; deadline 22 January
- PhD Scholarships in Philosophy, Social Anthropology, and Film Studies; University of St. Andrews, Scotland; deadline 31 January
- PhD Scholarships, Faculty of Engineering and the Environment; Northumbria University, Newcastle, UK; for the project “Buildings, Waste Networks, and the Circular Economy” — deadline 18 February
- Assistant Professor, Political Science; Texas A&M University; application review begins mid-February
- Postdoctoral Scholar, Rapid Response Misinformation Mitigation Efforts; Center for an Informed Public, University of Washington, Seattle, WA
- Postdoctoral Scholar, Computational Social Science; Information School, University of Washington, Seattle, WA
- Associate Communications Officer, Whitney Humanities Center, Yale University
- PhD Student Fellows, ELEVATE Program (Elevating Equity Values in the Transition of the Energy System), University of Massachusetts-Amherst
New Patrons
Discard Studies is funded, in part, by the generous patronage of our readers, via Patreon. New patrons include:
- Lily Baum Pollans. Thank you!
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