The core of the Agrarian Studies Program’s activities is a weekly colloquium organized around an annual theme. Invited specialists send papers in advance that are the focus of an organized discussion by the faculty and graduate students associated with the colloquium.
This topic embraces, inter alia, the study of mutual perceptions between countryside and city, and patterns of cultural and material exchange, extraction, migration, credit, legal systems, and political order that link them.
It also includes an understanding of how different societies conceive of the spatial order they exhibit. What terms are meaningful and how are they related?: e.g., frontier, wilderness, arable, countryside, city, town, agriculture, commerce, “hills,” lowlands, maritime districts, inland. How have these meanings changed historically and what symbolic and material weight do they bear?
Meetings are Fridays, 11am -1pm Eastern Time.
Meetings will be held in a hybrid format, both on Zoom and in-person at 230 Prospect Street, Room 101.
Please contact agrarian.studies@yale.edu to receive the meeting information and the password to download the paper from the Agrarian Studies website.
Spring 2023
January 27
Mark Hauser
Northwestern University, Anthropology
Conscripts to Climate Change: Archaeological Comparison of Two Post-Agrarian Landscapes
February 3
Attilio Bernasconi
** moved to Zoom only, please contact agrarian.studies@yale.edu for meeting information**
Yale University, Agrarian Studies
Building Territoriality in Aquatic Space: An Ethnography of the Ejército de Liberación Nacional (ELN) in the Colombian Pacific
February 10
Diogo de Carvalho Cabral
Trinity College Dublin, History
At the Mercy of Ants: Landscape Change and Multispecies Nation-Building in Brazil, c. 1820-1950
February 17
Dolly Kikon
University of Melbourne, Anthropology & Development Studies
Guns to Grains: Food Sovereignty in Northeast India
February 24
Assan Sarr
Ohio University, History
A Sufianke’s Family Tradition: Agriculture, Spirituality, and Change, c. 1940s-1950s
March 3
Denise Ho
Yale University, History
Oysterman and Refugee: Hong Kong and China Between the Tides, 1949-1997
March 31
Tamara Fernando
Institute of Historical Research, University of London, History
The Indian Ocean’s Pearl Bearing Reefs and Territoriality at Sea, 1880-1920
April 7
Thomas Monaghan
Yale University, History
Amami and amami: The Making of Sugar Islands in the East China Sea, 1609-1878
April 14
George Remisovsky
Yale University, History
Survey and Forget? Three Approaches to Long-Term Cultivation Rights in Northeast Asia, c. 1880-1940
April 21
Courtney T. Wittekind
Yale University, Agrarian Studies
Is it Solid? Speculation on ‘New City’ Futures in (Post)authoritarian Myanmar
April 28
Shozab Raza
Yale University, Agrarian Studies
Conjugating Universalisms: Communist Internationalism Across Tribe and Nation
May 5 (1-5:30pm)
Agrarian Studies Graduate Student Colloquium
Fall 2022
September 16
Sarah Steele
University of Cambridge, Public Health
Selling liquid gold: a history and analysis of first-food commodification and industry influence on nutrition for children aged three and under
September 23
Justin Farrell
Yale University, Sociology & School of the Environment
Effects of land dispossession and forced migration on Indigenous peoples in North America
Participants are also encouraged to explore the website of the Native Land Research Initiative.
September 30
Hilary King
Emory University, Development Practice
Brighter Spots: Tracing the Roots of Resilient Pandemic Response in Atlanta’s Alternative Food Systems
October 7
Karen Rignall
University of Kentucky, Community & Leadership Development
Extraction as an agrarian question: Copper mining, solar energy, and collective land tenure in the Moroccan periphery
October 14
Giovanni Batz
University of California, Santa Barbara, Chicana & Chicano Studies
The Fourth Invasion: Decolonizing Histories, Megaprojects, and Ixil Maya Resistance in Guatemala
October 28
Mark Usher
University of Vermont, Geography & Classical Languages and Literature
Following Nature’s Lead: Ancient Ways of Living in a Dying World
November 4
Diana Montaño
Washington University in St. Louis, History
Missionaries of light and progress: Engineers & Technological Pilgrims in Crafting Mexico’s Necaxa, 1890s-1914
November 11
Sarah Hines
University of Oklahoma, History
Trouble with Indians, Trouble with Explorers: Conquering and Revering the Glaciers of Bolivia’s Cordillera Real in the Age of Mountaineering
December 2
Steve Hindle (paper, map)
Washington University in St. Louis, History
Mediating Subsistence in Seventeenth-Century England: The Case of the Country Miller
December 9
Christopher Otter
Ohio State University, History
Socializing the Technosphere