Wetlandia: Analytics for a Global Terraqueous Humanities

Wetlandia is a two-day symposium and workshop that attempts to systematically rethink the wetland as an analytic constituted by far more than nature. Often located at ocean/river/land boundaries, wetlands serve as homes to a rich collection of flora, fauna, and people. Salt, sand dunes, mangroves, mud, weeds, and reeds all animate the uncertain wetland environment. Birds, fish, animals, and insects thrive (and die) on wetlands. Wetlands are spaces of economic life, affording people life and livelihood in salt pan development, fishing, hunting, agriculture, and more. At the intersection of this rich physical and social geography, we propose to rethink and reclaim the wetland from a conservationist and statist paradigm, to a political, economic, and historical one. In our symposium, we will convene global wetland scholars to propose four analytical interventions in wetland studies, namely: rethinking the undisciplined wetland; post-colonial/settler politics of the wetland; shifting spatial geographies and temporalities of the wetland; and finally (counter) mapping the wetland.