Anthropocene Reading Group 2024: Genealogies of Geopower

We invite you to join an interdisciplinary, cross-institutional reading group, focused on encounters between laws and different scholarly traditions in the context of the Anthropocene. This reading group is hosted by the La Trobe International and Comparative Law Cluster, with support from the Melbourne Law School Institute for International Law and the Humanities.

In 2024, we are exploring ‘Genealogies of Geopower’ – texts that consider the materiality of legal language, authority, and representation. We are associated with and share common intellectual and activist pursuits with the La Trobe Climate Network.

The group is co-convened Dr Kathleen Birrell and Roanna McClelland. In 2024, we meet monthly, online.

Please email Roanna McClelland or Dr Kathleen Birrell to RSVP and for access to reading resources.

Semester 1

Thursday 14 March 2024: Online
Jerome Whitington and Zeynep Oguz, ‘Geology, Power, and the Planetary: Earth as Praxis’ (2023) 15(3) Environmental Humanities 145-158.
Thursday 18 April 2024: Online
Adam Bobbette, ‘Political Geology as Method’ in The Pulse of the Earth: Political Geology in Java (2023) 1-19.
Thursday 9 May 2024: Online
Anna Grear, ‘Flat Ontology and Differentiation: In Defense of Bennett’s Vital Materialism, and Some Thoughts Toward Decolonial New Materialisms for International Law’ in Emily Jones and Matilda Arvidsson, International Law and Posthuman Theory (2024) 60-82.
Thursday 6 June 2024: La Trobe Law School and Online
La Trobe International and Comparative Law (ICLC) Seminar with Dr Emily Jones (Newcastle University). Dr Jones will be joined in conversation with Dr Kathleen Birrell and Dr Julia Dehm. This seminar will be in person at the La Trobe Law School Moot Court at Bundoora campus and online via Zoom. Lunch to follow.

Please email Dr Kathleen Birrell for further detail and link for online participation.

Suggested preparatory reading:
Emily Jones, Cristian van Eijk and Gina Heathcote, ‘The Common Heritage of Kin-Kind’ in Emily Jones and Matilda Arvidsson, International Law and Posthuman Theory (2024) 105-135.

Semester 2

Thursday 25 July 2024: Online
Kathryn Yusoff, Introduction. Coordinates (0°0′ Longitude, 51° N Latitude)’, ‘Geologic Life Analytic’, and ‘Geologic Life Lexicon’ in Geologic Life: Inhuman Intimacies and the Geophysics of Race (2024) 1-36.
Thursday 22 August 2024: Online
Miriam Tola, ‘Geopower: genealogies, territories and politics’ in Handbook of Critical Environmental Politics (2022) 564-576.
Thursday 19 September 2024: Online
Jerry Zee, ‘Liquidity and Liquefaction: A Transpacific Orogeny in Race, Wealth, and Mud’ (2022) 15(3) Environmental Humanities 190–202.
Thursday 17 October 2024: Online
Andrea Ballestero, ‘Casual Planetarities: Choreographies, Resonance, and the Geologic Presence of People and Aquifers’ (2023) 15(3) Environmental Humanities 266–283.