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What's New About New Materialism?: Black and Indigenous Scholars on Science, Technology and Materiality
Presentations:
Genetic Sensibilisation: Reconfiguring the Materiality of Genetic Ancestry in Cameroon
Victoria M. Massie, Anthropology
In Xochitl, In Cuicatl: Flowers, Songs and the Poetry of Photosynthesis
Marcelo Garzo Montalvo, Ethnic Studies
Ice as Materiality: Racialization in Alaska and Arctic Landscapes
Jen Rose Smith, Ethnic Studies
As the “New Materialisms” discourse continues to gain traction across multiple fields of inquiry, we come together as scholars of Xicanx/Latinx Studies, Native American/Indigenous Studies and postcolonial African Studies to open up a space of dialogue on the subject. Bringing into question the newness of “New Materialisms” invites us to critique some of the larger problems we encounter in this emerging literature; namely Eurocentrism, colonialism, universalism, and related erasures of race, class, gender, sexuality and other dynamics of power. As both an engagement and a departure from “new materialist” conversations, this panel will unpack questions of materiality, history, epistemology and power as they emerge in our projects regarding Indigenous sciences, the co-production of land and race in Alaska, and the politics of diasporic return through genetic ancestry testing.
Jen Rose Smith (Eyak, Alaska Native) is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Ethnic Studies. Her dissertation “Indeterminate Natures: Making Land, Race, and Indigeneity in Alaska,” traces historical and modern articulations of land, race, and indigeneity as the terms have been co-constituted under colonial conditions.
Victoria M. Massie is a writer and Ph.D. Candidate in Sociocultural Anthropology with a designated emphasis in Science and Technology Studies at UC Berkeley. Her dissertation, “Assembling Genetic Ancestry: Race, Return, and the Materiality of Home” examines how the contemporary ideas around race and the politics of belonging through genetic ancestry shift as this biotechnology is mobilized to forge diasporic ties in Cameroon.
Marcelo Garzo Montalvo (Mapuche, Chilenx) is an award-winning scholar-activist, classically-trained experimental musician, Aztec ceremonial dancer and Ph.D. Candidate in Comparative Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley. He is the recipient of the Chancellor’s Fellowship for Diversity and Inclusion and the Institute of Noetic Sciences Consciousness in Action Award.
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