The Future of Nuclear Waste What Art and Archaeology Can Tell Us about Securing the World’s Most Hazardous Material by Rosemary Joyce (Oxford University Press, 2020)
For this edition of the book club, please read:
- Introduction, 1-19.
- Chapter 3, 89-121, ‘Rosetta Stones and Cuneiform Tablets.’
- Your choice of Interlude 3, 122-135, and/or Interlude 5, 192-199.
Thursday 8 April, 16:00 hrs CEST (Central European Summer Time), on Zoom. Register below to receive the Zoom link.
The third edition of our online book club accompanying our Entanglements lecture series is on Tuesday 6 April. With low-key and accessible meetings, we hope to bring some intellectual companionship to these challenging times. For each meeting, we will carefully select a number of chapters or articles related to the upcoming Entanglements lecture. You are warmly invited to join in the discussion.
On 8 April (the same day), Professor Rosemary A. Joyce (University of California, Berkeley) will give a talk (register to join us on Zoom) about the global nuclear industry, which has for decades used sites like Stonehenge to justify designs for long-term markers to be placed over nuclear waste repositories to ensure they are not violated in distant, imagined futures. In the US, the result has been a proposal to build a pre-formed archaeological site, a ruin that would qualify for listing as a World Heritage site in the future if it were ever implemented. Alternative proposals, some emerging from the same planning process, others from activism in opposition to the nuclear industry, propose a variety of aesthetic installations as alternative ways of marking the contaminated landscapes under construction. Professor Joyce will discuss all this and more. All are welcome!
Prior to the lecture we will organise a “digital book club” on the same day, at 16:00 CEST via Zoom.
Please try to get a copy of the book through your university library. If you are having trouble accessing it, please email student assistant Sadie Hale: s.e.hale[at]student.vu.nl.
If you wish to participate in the discussion, please register below. The text and Zoom-link will be sent to you before the event.
Environmental Humanities Center Amsterdam 