CHE Symposium: Mutation / Adaptation

This year’s annual CHE interdisciplinary symposium aims to explore various interpretations of Mutation / Adaptation across different mediums, research approaches, and contemporary or historical contexts. The symposium will consider the conditions that require adaptations and mutations, and what or who they include. We speak of the need to adapt to ever shifting planetary conditions, in close correlation with the notion of mutation.

Adaptation is frequently associated with resilience in nature and society, including the development of technological fixes to deal with radical changes. Mutation, on the other hand, has an almost sinister quality, reflected, for example, in the evasive turns of the ever-changing Covid-19 virus. Yet, mutation carries positive undertones as well. It evokes survival through slight or dramatic changes when faced with unalterable circumstances that can carry the potential for destruction or extinction. To mutate implies some form of evolution, transformation, or even metamorphosis.

While mutation may appear inevitable, in Staying with the Trouble, Donna Harraway invites us to investigate the possibility of response-ability: instead of avoiding the inevitable and consistent “trouble” of the present, we instead consider how the restrictions of mutation enable us to consciously and creatively adapt to significant challenges.

Schedule

9:30–10 a.m.: Check-in, with light breakfast and coffee

10–11 a.m.: Rebecca Oh, “Speculation in the Anthropocene: Adapting to Water Futures in the Global South”

11–11:15 a.m.: Break

11:15 a.m.–12:30 p.m.: Grad Student Panel – Multi-Species: Imagination and Social Life

• Ellie Kincaid, “Reading Across Species: the Poetics of Adaptation and Relation”
• Bri Meyer, “Hold Your Horses: Adapting to Personhood Beyond Human Figurations”
• Allyson Mills, “Reef Response-ability: Speculations on Multispecies Imaginaries for Coral Bleaching”
• Logan Krishka, “Unruly Fruits: Brazilian Jackfruit from Delight to Blight”

12:30–1:30 p.m.: Catered lunch

1:30–2:30 p.m.: Dick Cates, “Honoring Nature’s Wisdom: A Wisconsin Farm Family’s Journey toward a Land Ethic, Gratitude, and Hope”

2:30–2:45 p.m.: Break

2:45–4 p.m.: Grad Student Panel –  Land: Logics and Community

• Prerna Rana, “Interrogating Power and Politics in Community Development Partnerships: the Case of an Environmental Community Based Organization in Rural Rajasthan, India”
• Inigo Acosta, “Overlapping Land Logics: Reexamining the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) and Indigenous Peoples Rights Act (IPRA) in Bukidnon”
• Elena Bird, “Seed Grower Cooperatives: Sites of Cross-Pollination and Post-Capitalist Mutations”
• Travis Olson, “‘Making It’ on the Edge of the West: The Adaptation of North Dakota’s Farmhouse Architecture”

4–4:15 p.m.: Final remarks – Will Brockliss (CHE director)