This project uses the polysemy of “waste” to catalyze community-oriented humanist research and artistic production that explore new ways to understand and represent wastelands, to imagine creative reuse, repair, and rejuvenation, to study landscapes, both neglected and in various states requiring regeneration, and especially to invite further attention to those communities most affected by both the wasteland and its remediation. Although the project’s principal aim is to encourage a wide-ranging conversation about the social and ecological ethics of wastelands, we are investing in projects focused on studying the art, music, and literature made about and from wastelands. In this interdisciplinary and multi-modal approach, we hope that researchers, practitioners, and community partners will investigate and innovate new ways of thinking about land use, waste systems, and the communities they most affect.
This project has several major components:
- Three Symposia over the 2024-25 academic year, which organizers hope will generate the foundation for edited volume that offers a global, diachronic approach to wastes and wastelands.
Nov. 1-2, 2024: “Premodern Waste/Lands," organized by Shannon and Joey McMullen (English)
Feb 8, 2025: “Ecologies of Waste," organized by Sara Gregg and Andy Bruno (History)
April 11, 2025: “Arts and Aesthetics of Waste and the Wasted," organized by Rebecca Dirksen (Ethnomusicology) with a special workshop performance of Kevin Rittberger's new play, "Two Suns and a Setting," followed by a roundtable, organized by Teresa Kovacs (Germanic Studies)
- Graduate Reading Group: Run by Grace Miller; meets every other week Tuesdays at 4pm to discuss articles, books, and creative writing related to wastes, wastelands, and/or “discard studies”
- “Walking the Wastelands” a community-based creative history project: a series of guided walks in Bloomington’s (remediated) wastelands led by experts and/or artists. Participants will be encouraged to document, write, or create an account of or response to the place’s history or their experience of some element of it. We hope to curate these for a digital exhibition. Upcoming walks include:
Switchyard Park (May 3, 2025)
Lake Monroe (Summer 2025)