Co-sponsored by History of Consciousness: earth ecologies x technoscience

This talk offers a speculative reading of practices that reclaim and reimagine human–soil relations within the legacies of anthropocentric, productionist, and colonial ecologies. I explore how soils come to epitomize planet Earth, life, death and memory, as well as the fraught significance of writing alternative stories of soil belonging amid the rise of white supremacist autochthonism. When nostalgic pasts and anticipated futures lose their appeal, learning from soils becomes a way of surfacing time—bringing up temporalities that resist linearity. Soil-centered worlds reorient attention toward the mixed, impure, and generative potentialities of more-than-human belonging.

María Puig de la Bellacasa works at the intersection of environmental humanities, socio-cultural studies of science, and feminist theory. Her book Matters of Care: Speculative Ethics in More-than-Human Worlds (University of Minnesota Press, 2017) brings feminist materialist care theory into conversation with debates on more-than-human ontologies and ecological practices. She is also co-editor of Ecological Reparation (Bristol University Press, 2023) and Reactivating Elements (Duke University Press, 2022). Her talk draws from a manuscript in progress, tentatively titled When the Word for World is Soil, which explores shifting human-soil relations across science, ecological movements, and aesthetics in visual art and public culture.

Fall 2025 COLLOQUIUM SERIES

THE CENTER FOR CULTURAL STUDIES hosts a weekly Wednesday colloquium featuring work-in-progress by faculty & visitors. We are pleased to announce our Fall 2025 Series. Sessions begin promptly at 12:15 PM and end at 1:30 PM (PST) in Humanities Building 1, Room 210.

Staff assistance is provided by The Humanities Institute.