This panel aims to bring together interdisciplinary research, theory and art regarding garbage, waste, anti-landscapes, rubbish, junk, toxic discourse, pollution and external spaces. Waste as an entity has become an area of research, and broadly describes spaces from garbage dumps to nuclear landscapes to composting. Through all of these scales, waste is involved in everyday relations as dialectics, metabolisms, and/or repurposed/recycled materials—as well as in art, literature, and (environmental) science.

Waste and pollution call for a non-human turn, where we may look to changes, adaptations, or mutations of plants, bacteria, flies, birds, or dogs. We may also pay attention to waste itself—how it moves, lives, gets produced, is represented, and how it becomes part of stories and maps. In many cases these various elements cohere, such as birding at garbage dumps or conservation ethics in toxic landscapes.

Panel for Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts (SLSA) Conference
Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Sept 27-30, 2012

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