Swamp Things

The swamp is woke, or something:

As a nonbinary space that is neither land nor water but both, the swamp serves as the material grounds—as the “terra infirma”—for a series of considerations about transformation and difference. Drawn from Professor C. Riley Snorton's new work, Mud: Ecologies of Racial Meaning, this lecture weaves together the insights of Black ecologies and trans studies through a nonbinary analytic to raise questions about the coloniality of climate (change) and being. In this talk, Professor Snorton will juxtapose three swamp narratives—the Wild Man of the Green Swamp, the Honey Island Swamp monster, and the Amazonian plant-spirits to discuss how swamps confound common sense notions of difference, especially in terms of racial and gender categorization. Ending with a meditation on the Brazilian film, Uyra: The Rising Forest, this talk also highlights how Black and Indigenous queer, trans and nonbinary artists and activists are redefining the terms of their difference.

Don't offend the ghosts...