Russia / Japan: Residues, Materialities, Environments: Trans-disciplinary Exchanges

When the burgeoning field of the Environmental Humanities has addressed Russia and Japan together, it has almost exclusively been in connection with nuclear disasters and post-apocalyptic scenarios, with comparative studies of the Chernobyl and the Fukushima accidents (see the works of Kate Brown and Adriana Petryna, among others).

The symposium seeks to explore and expand the connections between those two cultures in their relationship with, understanding and articulation of environmental questions besides and beyond the last three decades and issues of nuclear energy. Organizers Elena Fratto (Slavic Languages and Literatures), Franz Prichard (East Asian Studies), and Ryo Morimoto (Anthropology) will be convening a group of leading literary and media scholars of Japan and of Russia and the Soviet Union of different generations to promote exchange and generate new avenues of inquiry into natural catastrophe, food studies, sound studies, ocean studies, and the inescapable embeddedness of human organisms and human activity within the earth, nature, value systems, and the distribution of knowledge. For full schedule and registration, go to: https://humanities.princeton.edu/bodies-of-knowledge/

Sponsored by a David Gardner ’69 Magic Grant from the Council of the Humanities, the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, and the Department of East Asian Studies.

Event poster