Hannah Pivo is a member of the Extractive Media Working Group, which considers the historical role that media has played in shaping, representing, and contributing to resource extraction. The project is supported by the Center for the Study of Social Difference.
On the evening of Monday, March 4, the Extractive Media Working Group gathered to discuss work by Eleanor Johnson, Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, and architectural historian Jonah Rowen, who received his Ph.D. from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation (GSAPP) in 2020.
Plate 1, “The Colonial House,” from Carl Bernhard Wadström, An Essay on Colonization (1794).
The conversation centered on selections from Johnson’s new book, Waste and Wasters: Poetry and Ecosystemic Thought in Medieval England (University of Chicago Press, 2023), and a working paper by Rowen, titled “‘We might have had our Lands long ago’: Construction of the Sierra Leone Colony.” Johnson’s book examines the concept of ‘waste’ in medieval poetry, contextualized within legal, theological, and other discourses, while Rowen’s paper addresses the history of construction—particularly temporary and long-term housing—with a focus on the role of architecture in establishing “security” in the colony.
The Extractive Media Working Group in conversation. Photo by author.
Extractive Media co-organizer Professor Zeynep Çelik Alexander opened the discussion by identifying themes shared by the two works, including ideas of labor, subsistence, and vacancy. Numerous additional themes arose through the course of discussion, such as scarcity, capital and fungibility, climate, temporality and the temporary, anxiety towards future, and sympathy. This was the first Extractive Media event in which two distinct works were discussed. The group found this format to be highly rewarding and worth repeating in the future.
Written by Hannah Pivo.