Agenda

The first chapter of Waterscapes, “Precipitations”, is curated by Ifor Duncan and explores the emergence of new research methodologies and practices in the sphere of the watery humanities. These include the conception of pluvial time, deep ocean mediation practices, and the geopolitical infrastructures of rain.

29 September [online], 3.00 pm CEST: 
Sarah Nuttall -  On Pluviality: Rain as Method

Abstract
In the context of climate change, scholars such as Isabel Hofmeyr have drawn together the critical insights of postcolonial theory with elemental media studies to explore the implications of overlaying the hydrological cycle onto imperial and post-imperial cartographies. My own effort aims at refining an incipient method or mode of reading for rain, which I have called pluviality. I register and explore the part of that cycle that is the pluvial (rain that causes flooding). More specifically, I displace the hydrocolonial from the ocean, the coast and the port city, inland, to the river basins, flood plains and wet atmospheres of southern Africa. Re-reading literary texts and other media for rain, I argue, allows us to craft a novel narrative method mediating human and nonhuman worlds through rain.

Bio
Sarah Nuttall is Professor of Literary and Cultural Studies and Director of WISER at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. She has published many books and her work is widely cited across disciplines. Most recently, she is co-editor of a special issue of Interventions entitled Reading for Water and of the book Hinterlands: Extraction, Abandonment, Care. Her monograph On Pluviality is forthcoming.

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2 November

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Melody Jue
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7 December

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