Guest lecture - Elizabeth Kryder-Reid

Guest Lecture d'Elizabeth Kryder-Reid, le 7 juin 2022 à 12h30 à la Maison Internationale de la Recherche (MIR) à Neuville-sur-Oise

Humanity is facing intersecting crises of climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution as a consequence of humans’ impact on the planet over the past three hundred years. This period, often called “the Anthropocene,” also includes the places we typically associate with the most significant events and achievements of the modern world, such as industrial sites and battlefields. Toxic heritage lies at the intersections of memory practices and toxic heritage. This presentation focuses specifically on the environmental legacies of WWI created by both the use of and post-war destruction of conventional and chemical weapons across southern Belgium and northern France. It explores the significance of La Zone Rouge, particularly through its physical, ecological, material, and narrative histories of buried and submerged ordinance or “déchets de guerre” and the sites were munitions were destroyed by burning, exploding. Within this complicated landscape of war’s environmental harm, there is also a rich history of formal and informal memory practices, as well as the ongoing management and mitigation of the heritage sites. I explore the toxic legacy of the battlefields as part of the slow violence of war as it continues to affect people’s health and as a lens into the role of heritage in confronting the environmental crises that threaten earth’s livability.

Short Bio

Dr. Elizabeth Kryder-Reid is Chancellor’s Professor of Anthropology and Museum Studies at Indiana University, Indianapolis, where she is the Director of the Cultural Heritage Research Center and former Director of the IUPUI Museum Studies Program. Her transdisciplinary research investigates how the tangible and intangible remnants of the past figure in the contestation of social inequalities across gender, race, class, ethnicity, and religion. Her past research on the intersections of landscape and power, including Keywords in American Landscape and California Mission Landscapes: Race, Memory, and the Politics of Heritage. Her current research on toxic heritage investigates how places of environmental harm are treated as heritage and examines the ways heritage sites address environmental harm, particularly as it intersects with environmental justice issues. As a Fulbright Research Scholar (2022), Dr. Kryder-Reid’s research in France explores the landscapes of ruination associated with military conflict, particularly the ecological and social consequences of munitions in the WWI battlefields in the areas designated as the “Zone Rouge.” While at CY Cergy, she is working with Dr. Anne Hertzog, and also participating in the Ruines de Guerre seminars on Martyred Villages
 

Informations pratiques:

Le 7 juin 2022 12:30 PM (Paris time)
La présentation est organisée en présentiel dans salle H008 de la Maison Internationale de la Recherche (MIR) à Neuville-sur-Oise et en distanciel sur Zoom.
Pour participer à la réunion Zoom : https://cyu-fr.zoom.us/j/96177620552
ID de réunion : 961 7762 0552