The readings for this session are:

• Angé, Olivia. 2021. “Ecological Nostalgia and Interspecies Affect in the Highland Potato Fields of Cuzco (Peru),” in Olivia Angé and David Berliner (eds), Ecological Nostalgias. Oxford: Berghahn Books. Pages 107-125.
• Nkosi, Mbuso. 2023. "The spectre of the human potato" in These Potatoes Look Like Humans: The contested future of land, home, and death in South Africa. NYU Press. Pages 11-30.
• Sonjasdotter, Åsa. 2018. "The Order of Potatoes: On Purity and Variation in Plant Breeding." Third Text, 32 (2-3): 311-329.

I case you cannot access the readings via AU library or elsewhere, please contact Annika Capelán for further information.

About the reading group
During 2024, as part of her EU-funded Marie Curie Global Fellowship, Postdoc Annika Capelán will be coordinating a series of events on long-distance ecological entanglements – one of these events being the “Flows: Tracing material connections across distant landscapes” reading group.

Overall, the event series aims to explore possible methods for researching material flows across distant landscapes beyond or in the wake of the more obvious connections often linked to trade and commodity chains. In this respect, the purpose of the reading group is to collectively examine on a wide range of cases and processes. How, we ask, may our methods provide insights into less obvious or intangible connections, without denying the dominating processes that also demand attention?

Through our interest in how material flows have happened historically in unexpected ways and with unexpected effects, we hope to think further about what travels with, as well as what stays and does not travel with entities such as crops, fibers, infrastructural forms, and more. We will also focus on the (more or less) slow violence and damaged landscapes while also giving attention to constructive responses that seek to confront such damage.

Schedule for the "Flows" event series
In addition to the reading group, the activities of the “Flows: Tracing material connections across distant landscapes” event series will also include an online workshop with Environmental Humanities South (EHS) at the University of Cape Town in May, and an in-person workshop at AU in September, with online and in-person participation from EHS.

The schedule is as follows:

• Friday 15 March, 2024, at 14:30-16:00: AU in-person reading group
• Friday 15 March, 2024, at 14:30-16:00: AU in-person reading group
• TBA May 2024: Online UCT/EHS workshop
• Friday 21 June, 2024, at 14:30-16:00: AU in-person reading group
• Tuesday 20 August, 2024, at 14:30-16:00: AU in-person reading group
• Thursday 12 and Friday 13 September, 2024, hours TBA: AU/EHS workshop at AU

More information on the May and September workshops will be provided as soon as possible.