Black Friday | Life in a Material World

Lauren Hudson at Living Room

Fri, Nov 29 at 3 p.m. | 90 minutes

If nature/natural resources are threatened at a global scale, who benefits when we think of solutions as individual? Join Lauren Hudson in a West Village apartment for a special Black Friday Olio.

We think of nature as the pristine, untouched landscape, the idealized version of the earth before or simply without humans. We even build ‘shrines’--as geographer Cindi Katz says--to this nature in the form of local and national parks, wildlife preserves, land trusts, etc. However ‘nature’ has never been completely devoid of people, so how did we come to this ideology? Whose interests does it serve to view nature this way, and how does this view shape the way we manage our shared landscapes?

This Olio will discuss how the ‘production of nature’ has supported projects that have drastically changed our social landscape from the positive environmentalist movement of the progressive era, to global land grabs, population control, and corporate environmentalism. We will talk about the ways that the assumption of a ‘people-less’ nature shapes the ways we form solutions to climate crises. If nature/natural resources are threatened at a global scale, who benefits when we think of solutions as individual? Who benefits when our environmental discourse lays the blame at plastic straws?

Teacher: Lauren Hudson

Lauren Hudson is currently a doctoral candidate in Earth and Environmental Sciences at the CUNY Graduate Center where she writes about anti-capitalist organizing among women in NYC.

Venue: Living Room

What is Think Olio?

Think Olio is here to put the liberation back into the liberal arts.

Classically, the liberal arts, were the education considered essential for a free person to take an active part in civic life. To counter a humanities that has been institutionalized and dehumanized we infuse critical thinking, openness, playfulness, and compassion into our learning experience.

Scenius Membership

If Friday night lectures, museum field trips, and living room salons sound like your kind of thing, then you've found your people. We can't wait to welcome you to the Think Olio Scenius. More info