Othering Apples and Beyond Fossil Communities: Neighbors, Art, Alliances

Double featured seminar with critical heritage scholar and geographer, Professor Caitlin DeSilvey (Exeter University) and Bethany Wiggin (UPenn), a Professor of German and founding director of the U Penn Programme in Environmental Humanities.

In Othering Apples, Caitlin DeSilvey will report on an ongoing exploration of the apple (Malus domestica) in relation to themes of identity and ecocultural relations. Bringing in reflections on recent fieldwork in British Columbia and Montana, DeSilvey investigates the apple’s entanglement with settler-colonial histories and reports on the establishment of a ‘wilding’ orchard in Cornwall, UK.

Bethany Wiggin asks what constitutes good research amidst the climate crisis in her presentation Beyond Fossil Communities: Neighbors, Art, Alliances. Meditating on the university of the future, this talk draws specifically on a series of publicly engaged research collaborations. Toggling between conceptual and practical registers, the talk probes how mutually transformative campus-community alliances can contribute to the establishment of civic art-science practices beyond corporate capture.

Bios

Caitlin DeSilvey

Professor Caitlin DeSilvey (University of Exeter) is a geographer whose research explores the cultural significance of change and transformation, with a particular focus on heritage ecologies and climate futures.

Bethany Wiggin

Professor Bethany Wiggin is the Founding Director of the Penn Program in Environmental Humanities (2014-2024). Her scholarship explores histories of migration, language, and cultural translation since the Columbian exchange across the north Atlantic world.