April 2018 - urbanstudiescircular@lists.qc.cuny.edu

[UrbanStudiesCircular] April 18: Teach-In: Urban Resilience
by urbanstudiescircular＠lists.qc.cuny.edu 16 Apr '18

16 Apr '18

Teach-In: Urban Resilience Wednesday, April 18 | 6:30 - 8:00 PM NYU's Urban Democracy Lab 1 Washington Place, 5th Floor Student Lounge For more information: http://urbandemos.nyu.edu/event/teach-in-urban-resilience/??? ? What is "resilience"? How do we see it being used in ecological contexts, community contexts and personal contexts? Is there a way to improve "resilience" as we currently understand it and its uses in these contexts? Join the Student Advisory Board for the Urban Democracy Lab on Wednesday, April 18 from 6:30-8pm in the Gallatin 5th Floor Student Lounge for a teach-in which will explore the different ways the term "resilience" appears in our lives, and whether or not resilience is really the right term after all. Jacob Remes, Jeremy R. Del Rio, and Nega Lakew will join us to discuss the ecological, historical, and artistic perspectives of resiliency. Don't miss out on your chance to ask the experts questions about urban resilience and discuss what it means to you! Snacks will be provided. Panelists Jacob Remes<https://gallatin.nyu.edu/people/faculty/jar31.html>, Assistant Professor at the Gallatin School of Individualized Study Jeremy R. Del Rio<http://www.thrivecollective.org/jeremy-del-rio/>, Esq., Executive Director of the Thrive Collective Nega Lakew<https://www.linkedin.com/in/nega-lakew-leed-ap-206392a/>, Coastal Resiliency Planner for the NYC Department of Transportation

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[UrbanStudiesCircular] Wednesday, April 18th: Queens College Career and Networking Fair
by urbanstudiescircular＠lists.qc.cuny.edu 16 Apr '18

16 Apr '18

Queens College Career and Networking Fair Q Cafe Wednesday, April 18th 4 pm to 7 pm Meet over 30 employers! http://bit.ly/QueensFairList The session is offered to all CUNY students and alumni from LaGuardia Community College, Queensborough Community College, Queens College and York College. Please bring your CUNY college ID, several copies of resumes or business cards, and wear business attire. Student registration is required: www.tinyurl.com/QueensFair<http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?f=001QZC8zm8qIHetwKV1P8CXpXrRHHeiu0YSxe-AEhUPKsOd…>.?

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[UrbanStudiesCircular] April 17th NYPIRG Panel: "What the Health?"
by urbanstudiescircular＠lists.qc.cuny.edu 13 Apr '18

13 Apr '18

NYPIRG at Queens College presents: "What the Health?" Q & A panel about about our current health system. Featuring Professor Alice Sardell (Urban Studies) and Professor Joseph Cohen (Sociology) Tuesday, April 17th 12 pm-1:30 pm Patio Room at Queens College

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[UrbanStudiesCircular] April 30, 2018: Environmental Justice Panel at the New York City Bar Association
by urbanstudiescircular＠lists.qc.cuny.edu 13 Apr '18

13 Apr '18

Professor Natalie Bump Vena invites you to an upcoming panel about environmental justice at the New York City Bar Association. The event is FREE for students. **Advancing Environmental Equity in New York City** Monday, April 30th 6:30 pm New York City Bar Association 42 W. 44th Street New York, NY Attorneys from New York Lawyers for the Public Interest and the Natural Resources Defense Council, along with their clients, will discuss pressing local environmental justice issues, including: mold in NYCHA buildings, private waste transfer stations, and equity in climate change adaptation. They will also outline ways that New Yorkers, including lawyers, can advance environmental equity in the city. Rachel Spector Director of Environmental Justice, New York Lawyers for the Public Interest (NYLPI) Melissa Iachan Senior Staff Attorney, NYLPI A Representative from Cleanup North Brooklyn Shiva Prakash Equal Justice Works Fellow, NYLPI Sara Imperiale Staff Attorney, Natural Resources Defense Council Michael Stanley Lead Organizer, Manhattan Together and South Bronx Churches Here's the City Bar's link about the panel for more information: https://services.nycbar.org/iMIS/Events/Event_Display.aspx?EventKey=ENV0430…

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[UrbanStudiesCircular] Apply for a $1, 500 Stipend for an Unpaid Internship in Summer/Fall 2018
by urbanstudiescircular＠lists.qc.cuny.edu 13 Apr '18

13 Apr '18

All Queens College undergraduate and graduate students are eligible to apply for a $1500 stipend for unpaid internships. Applications deadlines: Early submission April 24th Final submission May 1st To apply: Log on to HireQC (Formerly Simplicity) Log in with your QC Username "jdoe101" Select the Jobs tab then Internship Stipend View full application description at http:/bit.ly/QCstipend

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[UrbanStudiesCircular] May 8: People’s Cities: A Summit
by urbanstudiescircular＠lists.qc.cuny.edu 12 Apr '18

12 Apr '18

People's Cities: A Summit Tuesday, May 8 | 7:30 - 9:30 PM 1 Washington Place NYU Gallatin School of Individualized Study For more information & RSVP: http://urbandemos.nyu.edu/event/peoples-cities-a-summit/? Co-sponsored by Urban Democracy Lab, NYU Collaborative on Global Urbanism, Department of Metropolitan Studies, and Deutsches Haus at NYU. Will cities save us? In the last decades we have witnessed a resurgent interest in cities, accompanied by a great deal of urban optimism, even in the face of the exclusion and inequalities of our cities. Cities have become a privileged target of investment, as professionals and elites have rediscovered urban cores as desirable locations. At the same time, cities have become a veritable laboratory for new technologies in transportation and infrastructure, ones that promise to be more sustainable and resilient. And most recently, urban progressivism has captured the imagination of many large cities, like New York, Barcelona, London, and Los Angeles, and smaller ones, like Jackson, MS, and Berkeley, CA. Such places have played important roles in advancing innovative progressive policies, but also as symbolic beachheads holding up socially just principles in the face of global tides of conservative and reactionary politics playing out at the national level. And yet a number of questions remain about the viability of progressive strategies at the local level. Join us for an exciting public debate and conversation about the possibilities — and limits — of municipal, and city-led, politics. Moderated by Juan Gonzalez<https://comminfo.rutgers.edu/gonzalez-juan-d> (of Democracy Now, and author of Reclaiming Gotham: Bill de Blasio and the Movement to End America’s Tale of Two Cities), confirmed participants so far include Gerardo Pisarello<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerardo_Pisarello> (Deputy Mayor of Barcelona), Kali Akuno<https://cooperationjackson.org/cop-delegation-bios/2015/9/16/kali-akuno> (author of the Jackson Plan), and Margit Mayer<http://www.jfki.fu-berlin.de/en/faculty/politicalscience/team/alumni/mayer/…> (Professor of Political Science and co-editor of Cities for People, Not for Profit: Critical Urban Theory and the Right to the City).

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[UrbanStudiesCircular] April 23: Building and Dwelling: Ethics for the City
by urbanstudiescircular＠lists.qc.cuny.edu 12 Apr '18

12 Apr '18

Building and Dwelling: Ethics for the City Book Talk Monday, April 23 | 6:00 - 8:00 PM Institute for Public Knowledge 20 Cooper Square, 5th Floor For more information: https://ipk.nyu.edu/events/book-talk-building-and-dwelling-ethics-for-the-c… NYU's Institute for Public Knowledge and the New York Institute for the Humanities invite you to join for a discussion with Richard Sennett on his latest book, Building and Dwelling: Ethics for the City.<https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/55383/building-and-dwelling/> In Building and Dwelling, Richard Sennett distils a lifetime's thinking and practical experience to explore the relationship between the good built environment and the good life. He argues for, and describes in rich detail, the idea of an open city, one in which people learn to manage complexity. He shows how the design of cities can enrich or diminish the everyday experience of those who dwell in them. The book ranges widely - from London, Paris and Barcelona to Shanghai, Mumbai and Medellin in Colombia - and draws on classic thinkers such as Tocqueville, Heidegger, Max Weber, and Walter Benjamin. It also draws on Sennett's many decades as a practical planner himself, testing what works, what doesn't, and why. He shows what works ethically is often the most practical solution for cities' problems. Richard Sennett <https://www.richardsennett.com/site/senn/templates/home.aspx?pageid=1&cc=gb> is currently a Senior Fellow of the Center on Capitalism and Society at Columbia University. Sennett's scholarly writing centers on the development of cities, the nature of work in modern society, and the sociology of culture. He has authored numerous books and articles, including The Corrosion of Character, The Fall of Public Man, and the Hidden Injuries of Class.

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[UrbanStudiesCircular] April 13-14: Insurgent Solidarities
by urbanstudiescircular＠lists.qc.cuny.edu 12 Apr '18

12 Apr '18

Insurgent Solidarities: Histories, Formations, Futures The Center for Place, Culture, and Politics Annual Conference 2018 Friday, April 13 | 12:30 PM - 8:00 PM Saturday, April 14 | 11:00 AM - 3:50 PM See below for full schedule and location. For more information: http://pcp.gc.cuny.edu/events/cpcp-spring-conference-insurgent-solidarities/ Given the political challenges of the present, the necessity for radical solidarity appears more pressing than ever. Yet while an understanding of solidarity has been pivotal to social change since at least the Haitian Revolution, how it is articulated has never been less than problematic. Is it a process of political change? Is it its goal? How does solidarity define what it is against without excluding forms of political difference that might enhance it? What can be learned from solidarity in the past, especially when contingent solidarity in the present regards such a history with justifiable incredulity? There can be no doubt that notions of solidarity continue to impact creatively how one understands political opposition and change, as well as how one interrogates constituency and allies, goals and timelines. The differences of solidarity and a respect for the specificity of particular struggles clearly invigorates how solidarity is now engaged, but solidarity can also be more than negotiated coalitions and fragmented alliances. This conference brings together activists, scholars, activist scholars, and radical thinkers all to consider the meanings of solidarity for political work. What makes solidarity insurgent? Is it its composition or the kind of change it struggles to affect? What are its scales and modes and what are their significance today? The spring 2018 Center for Place, Culture and Politics conference features presentations on crucial aspects of solidarity that include examples of its historical prescience, current formations, and ideas for its future elaboration. Individual political movements continue to provide a powerful inspiration for other activists, and perhaps by discussing them a further solidarity may be implied, but in general the conference wants to encourage creative dialogue over gestural affiliations. The conference will be composed both of panels that introduce positions on these questions, and breakout sessions that will permit all attendees to more actively engage in their articulation. The goal is not to codify what might constitute insurgent solidarities, but is to actively encourage their possibility. PANELS DAY 1: Friday April 13th | 12:30pm to 8:30pm Elebash Recital Hall The Graduate Center, City University of New York 365 Fifth Avenue<https://maps.google.com/?q=365+Fifth+Avenue&entry=gmail&source=g> (between 34th and 35th Street) New York, NY 10016 12:30pm–12:45: WELCOME AND OPENING REMARKS 12:45pm–2:20: ECONOMIES AND SOLIDARITIES There are rich traditions of solidarity within, across, and between states around the politics of economic forms and processes. For instance, in the period of post-independence decolonization there were several attempts in the Global South to find working alternatives to the perquisites of capitalist global integration. Such a genealogy continues right through the alterglobalization movements of the present. This panel explores the continuing political possibilities of such conjunctions, but also examines the scale of solidarity, particularly when thinking of the power of the local and community creativity, like the worker cooperatives of Mondragon or Cooperation Jackson. Are the lessons of such cooperation generalizable? How can such solidarity be networked in the present? Yasmin Lopez (National Coordinator of the Inclusive Development of Peasant Women, Honduran National Coordination of the National Articulation of la Via Campesina) Giovanni Roberto (Comedores Sociales de Puerto Rico) Mark Winston Griffith (CEANYC, Brooklyn Movement Center) Moderator/Discussant: Abby Scher (Research|Action Cooperative) 2:20–4:30pm: LAND, WATER, TERRITORY Social movements from around the world have been working to direct conversations about the right to land and water. Emerging from dialogues across the continents, analysis has taken shape that focuses on the contrast between land and water as commodities, as opposed to land and water that support the lives of communities. These dialogues bring the role of transnational corporations, which seek to control these resources for purposes of profit and speculation, into the spotlight, and challenge them via arguments about the need for community control and sovereignty. How do these social movements conceive of and practice solidarity across borders? How do they collaborate—and construct ways to shift the power to the people—to work on different scales? This panel will discuss the ways in which movements share analysis, tactics, and resources through popular and political education that challenge capitalist structures and worldviews, and put forth a vision in which land, water, and other natural resources are not commodities. Francia Marquez (Proceso de Comunidades Negras, Colombia) William Sacher (Minka Urbana / Universidad Andina Simon Bolivar, Ecuador) Alexania Rossato (People Affected By Dams In Brazil-MAB) Nick Estes (The Red Nation) Moderator/Discussant: Rob Robinson (National Economic and Social Rights Initiative) 4:30-5:00pm: Coffee Break 5:00-7:15pm: HISTORICAL AND GEOGRAPHICAL SOLIDARITIES This panel looks at different ways that particular movements have struggled to pursue the ends of solidarity under particular historical and geographical conditions. We explore how these historically and geographically situated solidarities can serve as a basis for thinking and practicing solidarity today. Saygun Gökariksel (Boğaziçi University / Lefteast) Robyn C. Spencer (Lehman College and Graduate Center, CUNY) Jasmina Husanovic (University of Tuzla, Bosnia) Oscar Otzoy (Coalition of Immokalee Workers) Moderator/Discussant: Peter Hitchcock (Baruch College and Graduate Center, CUNY) 7:15–8:30pm: KEYNOTE: Liberated Zones Were Real Corsino Tolentino (University of Cape Verde and Amílcar Cabral Foundation) * * * * DAY 2: Saturday April 14th| 11am to 3:50pm Room 6112 The Graduate Center, City University of New York 365 Fifth Avenue<https://maps.google.com/?q=365+Fifth+Avenue&entry=gmail&source=g> (between 34th and 35th Street) New York, NY 10016 11:00 Check in 11:30-12:40 BREAK OUT SESSIONS 1 12:40-1:40 BREAK OUT SESSIONS 2 1:50-3:50 LUNCH AND SHARING * * * * PARTICIPANTS Nick Estes (The Red Nation) Mark Winston Griffith (The Cooperative Economics Alliance of New York City; Brooklyn Movement Center) Saygun Gökarıksel (Boğaziçi University / Lefteast) Peter Hitchcock (Baruch College and Graduate Center, CUNY) Jasmina Husanovic (University of Tuzla, Bosnia) Yasmin Lopez (la Via Campesina, Honduras), beczabethlopez14(a)gmail.com<mailto:beczabethlopez14@gmail.com> Francia Marquez (Proceso de Comunidades Negras, Colombia) Oscar Otzoy (Coalition of Immokalee Workers) Giovanni Roberto (Comedores Sociales de Puerto Rico) Rob Robinson (National Economic and Social Rights Initiative) Alexania Rossato (People Affected By Dams In Brazil-MAB) William Sacher (Minka Urbana / Universidad Andina Simon Bolivar, Ecuador) Abby Scher (Research|Action Cooperative) Robyn C. Spencer (Lehman College and Graduate Center, CUNY) Corsino Tolentino (University of Cape Verde and Amílcar Cabral Foundation) BIOS Nick Estes (The Red Nation) Nick Estes is Kul Wicasa from the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe. He holds a PhD in American Studies from the University of New Mexico and is currently the American Democracy Fellow at Harvard University’s Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History. Estes is the author of the forthcoming book Our History is the Future: Mni Wiconi and the Struggle for Native Liberation (Verso 2019) and a coeditor with Jaskiran Dhillon of the forthcoming volume #NoDAPL and Mni Wiconi: Reflections on Standing Rock (University of Minnesota Press 2019). In 2014 in Albuquerque, NM, Estes cofounded The Red Nation, an organization dedicated to Native liberation. Mark Winston Griffith (CEANYC, Brooklyn Movement Center) Mark Winston Griffith is the founding Executive Director of the Brooklyn Movement Center (BMC), a community organizing body that builds power in Central Brooklyn. Over the decades he has run policy, community organizing and community development organizations, and has served as a journalist. Mark teaches a graduate course in community organizing at the Murphy Institute and serves on the board/leadership bodies of the Central Brooklyn Food Coop, the Brooklyn Cooperative Federal Credit Union, the National Black and Food Justice Alliance, the Cooperative Economics Alliance of New York City, Free Speech TV, and Communities United for Police Reform. Saygun Gökarıksel (Boğaziçi University / Lefteast) Saygun Gökarıksel is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Boğaziçi University. He got his Ph.D. in Anthropology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. His research and writing concerns the issues of historical capitalism, communism, international revolutionary politics, as well as the politics of history, law, security, and rightwing populism. His writings and commentaries appeared in journals and forums across Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and the U.S. Peter Hitchcock (Baruch College and Graduate Center, CUNY) Peter Hitchcock is Professor of English at Baruch College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He is also on the faculties of Women’s Studies and Film Studies at the GC. He is the author of several books, including Labor in Culture, or, Worker of the World(s), The New Public Intellectual and The Long Space. He is currently working on two research projects: one about seriality in politics and culture; the other on the aesthetics of commodities and financial instruments. Jasmina Husanovic (University of Tuzla, Bosnia) Jasmina Husanović is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Tuzla, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and a Chair of Cultural Studies. She earned her PhD in 2003 at University of Wales, Aberystwyth, UK. Her research interests are in cultural and political theory dealing with the politics of witnessing, equality and solidarity, governance of life and culture of trauma, as well as emancipatory politics with a focus on intersecting public spaces of cultural and knowledge production She has been engaged in or initiated various activist initiatives and platforms regionally and internationally In the academic 2017/2018 she is a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at CREEES, Stanford University. Yasmin Lopez (Inclusive Development of Peasant Women, Honduran National Coordination of the National Articulation of la Via Campesina) Francia Marquez (Proceso de Comunidades Negras, Colombia) Francia Marquez was born in the Yolombó Consejo Comunitario la Toma, an Afro-descendant, inter-ethnic and intercultural territory in Colombia that dates back to 1636, located in the municipality of Suarez department of Cauca. Organizing since the age sixteen, she works in arts, music, dance and theater to express the violence of anti-Black racism in the country. Her focus is on the care of the territory, for the care of nature, and for the reaffirmation of the ethnic and cultural identity as an Afro-descendent people. Marquez has organized against the forcible removal of these communities from their ancestral lands by the Salvajina dam mega projects. In 2015, Sueca Diakonia awarded Marquez the National Prize as Human Rights Defender. She is part of the Proceso de Comunidades Negras and electoral candidate for the House of Representatives for Special Circumscription of Afro-Descendant Communities. Francia Marquez is a student of law of the University Santiago de Cali and mother and head of her family. Oscar Otzoy (Coalition of Immokalee Workers) Oscar Otzoy is a senior staff member and leader of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW). Mr. Otzoy is a farmworker himself, with over 6 years of experience working in the fields of Florida. As part of the CIW, Oscar and his colleagues conduct worker-to-worker education sessions on human rights in the fields of farms participating in the CIW's groundbreaking Fair Food Program. Mr. Otzoy's work at the CIW includes hosting daily radio shows on the CIW’s community radio station, leading weekly worker meetings, handling complaints of abuses in the fields, managing wage theft claims, and investigating cases of sexual violence and modern-day slavery. Giovanni Roberto (Comedores Sociales de Puerto Rico) Giovanni Roberto is a puertorrican social activist and organizer for the Center for Political, Educational and Cultural Development. Roberto is a former student leader during the 2010-2011 mobilizations and strikes. CDPEC and its Community Kitchens programs have been pioneer of the new resistance to austerity organizing solidarity food distribution since 2013. CDPEC have organize Mutual Aid Centers after Hurricane Maria to distribute food and help the population in need. This MAC are now working to be permanent popular spaces. Rob Robinson (National Economic and Social Rights Initiative) Rob Robinson is a member of the Leadership Committee of the Take Back the Land movement and a staff volunteer at the National Economic and Social Rights Initiative (NESRI). After losing his job in 2001, he spent two years homeless on the streets of Miami and ten months in a New York City shelter. Rob has worked with homeless populations in Budapest Hungary, Berlin Germany and is connected with housing movements in South Africa and Brazil. He works with the European Squatters Collective, International Alliance of Inhabitants; MST and the Movement of People Affected by Dams in Brazil. Alexania Rossato (People Affected By Dams In Brazil-MAB) Alexania Rossato is daughter of small farmers affected by the hydro-power dam Dona Francisca, in the south of Brazil. She studied journalism and since 2004 is an active member of the Movement of People Affected by Dams in Brazil, called MAB (acronym in Portuguese). In MAB she started coordinating the social movement's communication collective. Today her task within MAB regards the articulation with allies in the state of Rio de Janeiro, where in 2017 MAB's 8th National Encounter took place. William Sacher Freslon (Minka Urbana / Universidad Andina Simon Bolivar, Ecuador) William Sacher Freslon is Professor of the Climate Change Program at Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar, Quito, Ecuador. He holds a PhD in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences from McGill University and a PhD in Development Economics from Flacso, Quito. Additionally, he trained as an engineer in fluid dynamics and hydraulics at the INPG in Grenoble, France. Sacher is author of various books on large-scale mining from a political philosophy, political economy and political ecology perspective. He is an active member of Minka Urbana, a urban social movement against transnational mining based in Quito, Ecuador, and collaborates with many others in Ecuador, Canada, France and other Latin American countries. Abby Scher (Research|Action Cooperative) Abby SCher is a New York-based sociologist and journalist who is a partner with the Research|Action Cooperative. She writes about the solidarity economy for progressive outlets, and is a member of the Union-Coop Council of the US Federation of Worker Cooperatives supporting ties across different sectors of the labor movement. Robyn C. Spencer (Lehman College and Graduate Center, CUNY) Robyn C. Spencer is a historian that focuses on Black social protest after World War II, urban and working-class radicalism, and gender. Her first book The Revolution Has Come: Black Power, Gender, and the Black Panther Party in Oakland, analyzes gender and the organizational evolution of the Black Panther Party in Oakland. She has contributed essays connecting history to current events to The Washington Post, Black Youth Project Blog, Vibe Magazine, Colorlines, Truthout, and Black Perspectives. She is a committed activist and is a member of The Campaign to Bring Mumia Home and Black4Palestine. Robyn Spencer is Associate Professor of History at Lehman College and the Graduate Center, CUNY. Corsino Tolentino (University of Cape Verde and Amílcar Cabral Foundation) Corsino Tolentino (born André Corsino Tolentino) has a PhD in comparative education on university and social transformation in Cape Verde. This research is considered foundational for the creation and development of the University of Cape Verde (Uni-CV). Tolentino was born in the island of Santo Antão (in 1946) and attended school in Cape Verde, Portugal, and internationally (Belgium, Russia, and the United States. He was a freedom fighter under the Amilcar Cabral's PAIGC (African Party for the Independence of Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde), Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Cape Verde from the independence in 1975 up to 1977), Member of Parliament (1978-1981), Ambassador to Portugal, Spain, France, and Italy (1981-1984), Minister of Education (1984-1991), UNESCO and World Bank consultant (1993-1999), and director in the Gulbenkian Foundation (2000-2006). Ambassador Tolentino launched the West Africa Institute (WAI /IAO) and the Academy of Science of Cape Verde. He researches, teaches, and writes on politics, education, and migration. Tolentino is the author of Cabo Verde – Janelas de África (Cape Verde islands: Windows of Africa), 2016, and the recent Breve Ensaio Biográfico sobre Aristides Maria Pereira, on the first President of Cape Verde. This conference is organized and sponsored by the Center for Place, Culture and Politics; and cosponsored by The Advanced Research Collaborative; The Art, Activism, and the Environment Research Group from the Seminar on Public Engagement and Collaborative Research; The Center for the Humanities; The Department of Anthropology; and the Department of Sociology, Graduate Center at the City University of New York. This conference is lovingly cared for by Mary N. Taylor, Malav J. Kanuga, Sonia Vas Borges, Mamyrah Dougé-Prosper, Rob Robinson, Maria Luisa Mendonca, Esra Padgett, and Peter Hitchcock. Special thanks to Sampson Starkweather and Jordan Lord from the Center for the Humanities; to Erika Ceruzzi for poster design and Kevin Caplicky for the limited hand print editions; and those accompanying for translations. For more information, please visit www.pcp.gc.cuny.edu<http://www.pcp.gc.cuny.edu/> or find our event on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/events/181306185982342/<http://pcp.gc.cuny.edu/?newsletters_link=43330c1b4275dcddeb6cb8f9811bcfb5&h…> This event is free and open to the public.

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[UrbanStudiesCircular] April 13: The Decolonization of Design
by urbanstudiescircular＠lists.qc.cuny.edu 12 Apr '18

12 Apr '18

The Decolonization of Design: Pierre Bélanger Friday, April 13 | 1:00 PM Columbia GSAPP 116th Street & Broadway, 114 Avery Hall For more information: https://www.arch.columbia.edu/events/824-the-decolonization-of-design-pierr… Pierre Bélanger in conversation with Kate Orff. “What we from our point of view call colonization, missions to the heathen, spread of civilization, etc., has another face—the face of a bird of prey seeking with cruel intentness for distant quarry—a face worthy of a race of pirates and highwaymen. All the other eagles and other predatory creatures that adorn our coats of arms seem to me apt psychological representatives of our true nature.” Carl G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1961) The current discourse on climate change has failed to acknowledge the territorial sovereignties and political geographies that confront the bounded systems and perceived permanence of the nation state. The real crisis, if there is one, seems to be located in the minds, models, and media of city-centric populations that are more and more removed from means of material production and territories of resource exploitation. Put otherwise, the map is no longer the territory. This spatial, ontological divide—between metropolis and hinterland—is exacerbated by an explosion of industrial operations and incorporations seamlessly crossing political boundaries and geographic borders. So large, so vast, and so fast is the pace and scale of these operations, they are seemingly impossible to imagine, let alone to represent. Although the flow and concentration of industrial extractive capital may vary with ‘urban demand,’ ‘technological capacity,’ or ‘discovery of resources’—whether onshore or offshore, structures of political power and systems of social control have remained relatively unchanged and unchecked for the past four to five centuries. In the words of systems thinker Georg Hegel (Philosophy of Right, 1820): “the development of the State into a constitutional monarchy is the supreme product and power of the world today, in which its ideal and unlimited condition has been reached.” Clearly, the contemporary, colonial condition survives. If then “the problem of territory, and of territoriality, is one of the most neglected in geography and political economy” according to the alter-urbanist Claude Raffestin (Pour une Géographie du Pouvoir, 1980), how should we re-imagine the current axis and power relations between the metropolis and the hinterland that underlies the contemporary focus on the city and on the state? How do we rethink, resist, and subvert the imposed, imperial binaries between the urban and the rural, the north and the south, the center and the periphery, that are entrenched in misleading oppositions of town and country, property and sovereignty, occupation and inhabitation, settlement and seasonality, civilization and wilderness? Drawing from the claim by contrarian economist John Kenneth Galbraith (The New Industrial State, 1967) that “capital and power became more important land in the past century,” the renewal of the geopolitical discourse on territory is fundamentally contingent on the reclamation of land, landscape, and life. Proposing a contra-colonial lens, this presentation profiles current Canadian states and scales of extraction through three inter-related processes that lie between the colonial conceptions of the metropolis and the hinterland: territorial displacement, regulatory discrimination, and Indigenous dispossession. Drawing from subliminal symbols and persistent projections of state power throughout the past 800 years, specific references will be made to professional practices and institutionalized disciplines of architecture, engineering, and planning whose origins reveal underlying imperial motives and whose pedagogical curriculum continue to normalize colonial systems of spatial inequity through countless standards, surveys, specifications, and signifiers. Inscribed in this bureaucratic structure and infrastructural grid of banks, prisons, parks, cities, suburbs, highways, dams, mines, pipelines, and reservations (to name a few), these systems represent the engineered slate upon which the State—and of the Crown—exercise their influence and perpetuate their supremacy. Critically questioning the colonial practices of planning, architecture, and engineering, the presentation seeks to contribute a basis for undermining the industrial underpinnings and imperialist hegemonies that lie on, above, and below the surface of contemporary settler-state space whose foundations rely and rest on the perpetuation of spatial inequities, environmental injustices, and cultural inhumanities. The presentation will be followed with a series of counter-projects and retroactive strategies that inquire into the implications and possibilities of unplanning and undesign vis-à-vis the current colonial structures of oppression. Pierre Bélanger is a landscape architect, author, curator, and associate professor at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. Contesting the imperialism of state building and institutional systems, Bélanger has published two core books on remapping states of engineering and militarism: Landscape as Infrastructure<https://landscapearchitecturemagazine.org/tag/gale-fulton/>, and Ecologies of Power<https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/ecologies-power> (co-authored with Alexander Arroyo). Additionally, Bélanger has published about the political, territorial, and spatial language of landscape in a recent issue of Harvard Design Magazine, Wet Matter<http://www.harvarddesignmagazine.org/issues/39>, co-edited with Jennifer Sigler (@lowlowtide<https://twitter.com/lowlowtide>), as well as in the monograph of the 35th edition of the Pamphlet Architecture Series, Going Live: From States to Systems<http://www.papress.com/html/product.details.dna?isbn=9781616893613>, profiling the visual representation of vegetal systems and different life forms. As a practicing designer and founder of the Landscape Infrastructure Lab, he received the Canada Prix de Rome in Architecture and was curator of the controversial Canada Pavilion and Exhibition Extraction<https://www.google.com/culturalinstitute/beta/exhibit/ZQLySL6ghNalIg> at the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale (@1partperbillion<https://twitter.com/1partperbillion>). In collaboration with a range of creators and activists during the past decade, Bélanger will be releasing an edited volume titled Extraction Empire<https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/extraction-empire> in Spring 2018, profiling the states, scales, and systems of Canada as the largest resource extraction nation on the planet. Organized by the Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture<https://www.arch.columbia.edu/research/centers/2-buell-center> as a part of the “Power: Infrastructure in America” research initiative. Free and open to the public.

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[UrbanStudiesCircular] FW: Calling all Students! Apply to be a 2018 Waterfront Scholar (Applications due 4/25/18)
by urbanstudiescircular＠lists.qc.cuny.edu 11 Apr '18

11 Apr '18

From: Kate McLetchie-Sheldon <kmcletchie(a)waterfrontalliance.org> Date: Wednesday, April 11, 2018 at 3:48 PM To: Kate McLetchie-Sheldon <kmcletchie(a)waterfrontalliance.org> Subject: Calling all Students! Apply to be a 2018 Waterfront Scholar (Applications due 4/25/18) Dear Professors and Administrators, Greetings from the Waterfront Alliance<http://waterfrontalliance.org>, a civic organization working to protect, transform, and revitalize the New York and New Jersey harbor and waterfront. We are writing to ask for your help in inviting your students—both undergraduate and graduate and from any discipline—to apply to attend our annual Waterfront Conference<http://waterfrontalliance.org/what-we-do/waterfront-conference/> as part of a group of 2018 NYCEDC Waterfront Scholars. This year’s Waterfront Conference conference—Cities on the Edge—will be held on Tuesday, May 8 aboard the Hornblower Infinity at Pier 40, Chelsea Piers, New York City. The day-long conference will explore how local and municipal leaders in coastal cities are leading the response to adapting to climate change. Sessions will be dedicated to learning from yesterday, understanding what is happening today, and adapting for tomorrow, and will feature examples from New York and beyond, including Houston, Philadelphia, Washington DC, Boston, Baltimore, and Los Angeles. Now in its third year, Waterfront Scholars<https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScJlVfGZAdxzXEWWGcGMnNDm5QWjJRW6kD…> brings together a diverse group of students for a day of learning and networking on the waterfront. Our 2017 cohort of scholars included 70 students hailing from two dozen academic institutions. To be considered, we’re asking students to answer, in 250 words or less, the following prompt: Consider a waterfront somewhere in the world that you have experienced or have a connection to (it could be one you grew up around or that you visited only briefly) and describe one emerging threat or challenge facing this waterfront as a result of climate change. What changes and improvements can local authorities or residents make, both short-term and long-term, to develop climate resiliency and prepare for unanticipated emergencies? We encourage you to think creatively and expansively, considering solutions from fields ranging from policy and design to engineering and education. Interested applicants are asked to fill out this short form<https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScJlVfGZAdxzXEWWGcGMnNDm5QWjJRW6kD…> by Wednesday, April 25 in order to be considered for a spot as one of our 2018 scholars. Waterfront Scholars will be invited to attend the Waterfront Conference free of charge, and will be recognized during the day’s activities. Should you have any questions or need additional information please do not hesitate to reach out to me by email or at 212.935.981 x105. Thank you, Kate [email_sig_logo] Kate McLetchie-Sheldon Chief Operating Officer 217 Water Street, Suite 300, New York, NY 10038 T 212.935.9831 x105 waterfrontalliance.org<http://www.waterfrontalliance.org/> #OurWaterfront

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