“Although the Atmosphere in which we live weighs on everyone with a 20,000 lb. force, do you feel it?” – Karl Marx
The standard, or near average, atmospheric pressure at sea level on the earth is 1013.25 millibars, or about 14.7 pounds per square inch.
Our workshop provides a forum for scientists, social scientists, and humanists to develop new methods, terms, and analytical frames for inquiry into Earth’s atmosphere(s).
Focusing on atmosphere brings attention to what Juliana Spahr calls “this connection of everyone with lungs,” what Christina Sharpe synthesizes as “the weather,” and what Malcom Ferdinand describes as the “colonial hurricane.” Yet, attending to atmosphere also draws things out of focus; categories such as event, history, and materiality seem to flicker and shift, like clouds on the wind. Atmosphere would seem to be an almost paradigmatic subject of Anthropocene scholarship which simultaneously resists paradigms of disciplinary understanding.
As a collective, we hope to deepen our investigation of Earth atmospheres to shed light on problems that no one of our disciplines can engage alone. We will investigate the still little-known practices by which corporate energy giants like Enron use climate data to commodify atmosphere and weather patterns. We will bring together insights of postcolonial and area studies with those of meteorology. We will engage meteorological research showing that basic atmospheric mechanisms like heating and cooling occur via different dynamics in the tropics and the poles. We will explore multiple intersecting planetary atmospheres that challenge what Kristen Simmons has called “settler atmospherics,” a monologic account of atmosphere manifest as monoculturalism.
We hope you will join us.
Forecasting Futures: The Commodification of Air in Turbulent Times
A conversation with Timothy Choy, Tobias Menely, and Samuel Randalls
October 7, 2022
[[…]30° → 60°[…]]: Atmosphere Beyond the Midlatitudes
A Conversation with Ángel F. Adames-Corraliza and Jen Rose Smith
November 11, 2022