Austin Anthropocene Field Campus
In Austin, Texas March 24-27, 2020 | Collaboration runs February 24 - May 4
Space is limited | Rolling admissions through February 13
The Quotidian Anthropocene (QA) project explores the dynamics and challenges of the Anthropocene in different places -- and the kinds of collaborative knowledge production needed to address these. A key goal is to develop deeply interdisciplinary, comparative perspective on environmental problems and solutions, enabling learning across sites. Austin, Texas is an especially interesting site of the Anthropocene because of concerted effort to fully transition the city's electric grid to renewable energy. The QA Austin project focuses on the players and processes of Austin's energy transition, striving to understand cultural and social as well as a technical and economic dimensions. The QA Field Campus in Austin March 24-27, 2020 will bring local and visiting participants into dialogue with local actors. Together, we will develop ways to think about and teach the Austin Anthropocene case, contributing to a freely accessible archive of materials that can be used in classrooms and for community learning. We will also extend our ongoing work to build a DIY Guide to QA Field Campuses.
Participants will work in small “Field Teams” to produce teaching materials that reflect what they learn in the field campus. There will be Field Teams focus on 1) energy transition rhetoric, 2) civic data infrastructure needed to plan and sustain energy transition, 3) environmental in/justice and land use in energy transition.
Participants in the Austin QA Field Campus will begin virtual collaboration on February 24, 2020, joining small working groups to produce different kinds of teaching material. The Field Campus in Austin will begin the afternoon of Tuesday, March 24, continuing through Friday, March 27. Virtual collaboration will continue through the beginning of May so that the QA Austin teaching materials we develop can be published online in time to be integrated into Fall 2020 courses and programming.
The Open Seminar will direct collaborative attention to the many scales and types of systems that interlace and synergize to produce anthropocenics on the ground in particular locales and vernanculars. These questions will guide our engagements.
QUESTIONING QUOTIDIAN ANTHROPOCENES...Read more
Space for participating in the field campus is limited. Applications will be accepted on a rolling basis until we reach full capacity. Applicants should send a brief statement (300 words) of their interest in the Austin Anthropocene Field Campus. These statements must identify which Field Team(s) the participant has an interest in joining (focused on rhetoric, civic data, and environmental in/justice), explaining the experience and expertise they would bring to the work. Applicants should also confirm their availability and willingness to spend time prior to and after the Field Campus preparing and exchanging materials and ideas with other participants.
Participants in the Austin Field Campus will need to spend about three hours a week working on the project in the weeks before and after meeting in Austin. The full project period will be February 24-May 4. Participants will need to register and be ready to work on the project's digital platform, https://disaster-sts-network.org/. One goal of the project is to give participants the opportunity to develop collaborative research capacity and experience.
Participants will need to fund their own travel to Austin. Simple, shared lodging, local transportation, and some meals will be provided. If interested in participating, please fill out this application form. For any questions or concerns, contact James Adams at [email protected].
In applying to participate in this project, I recognize that 1) the project will require approximately three hours a week in the weeks before and after meeting in Austin (February 24-May 4); 2) I'll need to register and be ready to work on the...Read more
--Subject to Change--
TUESDAY, MARCH 24, 5PM: Orientation: Environmental Justice and Renewable Energy in Austin
Participants should arrive in downtown Austin by 5pm on Tuesday evening. For our first event, we will meet with a diverse mix of Austin community...Read more
This project extends the work of the Quotidian Anthropocene project. Throughout 2019, the QA project worked in collaboration with Haus der Kulturen der Welt and Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin on their Anthropocene Curriculum, focusing on the Mississippi: An Anthropocene River project. The latter included a St. Louis Field Campus and a New Orleans Field Campus. The QA Austin Field Campus will extend the theory and practice of field campuses as a collaborative method especially appropriate for the Anthropocene. Like prior Anthropocene Field Campuses, our work in Austin will experiment with archiving for the Anthropocene, building public knowledge resources linking diverse sites.
The Quotidian Anthropocene project explores how the Anthropocene is playing out on the ground in different settings. The aim is to create both...Read more
The Disaster-STS Network links researchers from around the world working to understand, anticipate and respond to disaster, fast and slow. Current projects focus on ...Read more
The Platform for Experimental, Collaborative Ethnography (PECE) is a free and open source (Drupal-based) digital platform that supports multi-sited, cross-scale ethnographic and historical research. PECE provides a place to archive and share primary data, facilitates analytic collaboration, and...Read more
This project contributes to and runs in the spirit of a creative commons, expansively conceived. It is designed to create public...Read more
Anthropologist James Adams directs the QA Austin project, extending from his ...Read more