The EASP Visiting Artists Program and E.A.R.T.H. Lab are proud to present: Kali Rubaii
Kali Rubaii is an assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology at Purdue University, interested in sharpening resistance strategies that target the vulnerable nexus between coercive power and the physical world. My research explores the environmental impacts of less-than-lethal militarism. My book project, Counter-resurgency: the Ecology of Coercion, examines how farmers in Anbar, Iraq struggle to survive and recover from transnational counterinsurgency projects. My latest research documents the links between the epidemic of birth defects in Fallujah and military environmental damage, with a team of doctors, epidemiologists, and environmental activists.
Lecture: War is a Toxic Relationship:
Having recently returned from Fallujah, Iraq, I will discuss burn pits and birth defects .These are two figures of toxic exposure receiving popular attention two decades after the US invasion and military occupation. My aim is to explore what these figures are trying to say about the toxic relationship between the US Empire and the landscapes it touches. If war is a permanent landscaping machine, what are the incendiary and asphyxiation qualities of "peace," and where are they located? How does war figure into visions of ecological collapse or thriving as people make new lives? And finally, as with all toxic relationships: [how] do people get out of it?
Monday April 24th 5:30pm - 7pm at Elena Baskin Visual Arts, Seminar Room D-101
Interviews and Press:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcgWzZoop4Q
https://www.democracynow.org/2022/8/3/burn_pits_healthcare_veterans_iraq_afghanistan
