Living Through Upheaval: Elemental Matter

Fall 2020: Under Fire

On Thursday, December 10th at 5:00 PM PST, UCHRI’s Living Through Upheaval: Under Fire explored the power and perils of fire. Standing apart from water, earth, and air, fire was discussed as a centerpiece of human developments, dynamics, and transformations, of narration across most all modes and forms of cultural expression, and as a catalyst for developments in food and shelter, not to mention sometimes unwelcome, if significant shifts in our contemporary culture. Joined by: Elizabeth Hoover (UC Berkeley), Abrahm Lustgarten (ProPublica), Elizabeth Povinelli (Columbia), Brandi Summers (UC Berkeley), and Karen Tei Yamashita (UC Santa Cruz).

In the background:

Gaston Bachelard, The Psychoanalysis of Fire

James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time

Elizabeth Hoover, “‘Fires were lit inside them’: The Pyropolitics of Water Protector Camps at Standing Rock”; The River Is in Us: Fighting Toxics in a Mohawk Community 

The Karrabing Film Collective, “We burn grass when it’s properly dry – but what are we gonna do when the whole world fried?”; “Growing up Karrabing”

Frank Kanawha Lake, “Fire as Medicine: Fire Dependent Cultures and Re-Empowering American Indian Tribes”

Abrahm Lustgarten, “The Great Climate Migration”; “How Climate Migration Will Reshape America” 

Michael Marder, Pyropolitics: When the World is Ablaze

Elizabeth Povinelli, “Fires, Fogs, Winds”; Geontologies: A Requiem to Late Liberalism

Stephen Pyne, “How Fire Shapes Everything” 

Brandi Summers, Black in Place: The Spatial Aesthetics of Race in a Post-Chocolate City

Karen Tei Yamashita, Tropic of Orange 

Yosuke Yamashita, “Burning Piano”