The More-Than-Human Anthropocene

Presented by the USC Queer Transpacific Research Cluster, this presentation by guest speaker Anna Tsing (author of The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibilities of Life in Capitalist Ruins) expounds upon the concept of the “anthropocene,” and methods for studying the more-than-human as the feral dynamics of imperial and industrial infrastructures. This event was co-produced with the support from the USC Departments of Anthropology, American Studies & Ethnicity and the Visual Studies Research Institute.

About the speaker: Anna Tsing is an American anthropologist. She is a professor in the Anthropology Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz. In 2018, she was awarded the Huxley Memorial Medal of the Royal Anthropological Institute. Tsing received her B.A. from Yale University and completed her M.A. (1976) and PhD (1984) at Stanford University. She has contributed, and written several articles and books on a broad range of anthropological subjects. In 2010, she received a Guggenheim Fellowship. In 2013, Tsing was bestowed the Niels Bohr Professorship at Aarhus University in Denmark for her contribution to interdisciplinary work in the fields of humanities, natural sciences, social sciences, and the arts. She is currently developing a transdisciplinary program for exploring the Anthropocene. Tsing is director of the AURA: Aarhus University Research on the Anthropocene at Aarhus University.