on June 7, 2022
Published on April 15, 2022– Updated on January 20, 2023
Guest Lecture : Elizabeth Kryder-Reid
« La guerre qui ronge le manteau vert des prairies » : the environmental harm of war and the changing shape of memory in La Zone Rouge
Dr. Elizabeth Kryder-Reid is Chancellor’s Professor of Anthropology and Museum Studies at Indiana University, Indianapolis where she is the Director of the Cultural Heritage Research Center.Humanity is facing intersecting crises of climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution as a consequence of humans’ impact on the planet over the past three hundred years. This period, often called “the Anthropocene,” also includes the places we typically associate with the most significant events and achievements of the modern world, such as industrial sites and battlefields. Toxic heritage lies at the intersections of memory practices and toxic heritage. This presentation focuses specifically on the environmental legacies of WWI created by both the use of and post-war destruction of conventional and chemical weapons across southern Belgium and northern France. It explores the significance of La Zone Rouge, particularly through its physical, ecological, material, and narrative histories of buried and submerged ordinance or “déchets de guerre” and the sites were munitions were destroyed by burning, exploding. Within this complicated landscape of war’s environmental harm, there is also a rich history of formal and informal memory practices, as well as the ongoing management and mitigation of the heritage sites. I explore the toxic legacy of the battlefields as part of the slow violence of war as it continues to affect people’s health and as a lens into the role of heritage in confronting the environmental crises that threaten earth’s livability.
Date: 7 June 2022 from 12:30 to 14:00
To attend the relote guest lecture, please connect to Zoom: https://cyu-fr.zoom.us/j/96177620552
ID meeting: 961 7762 0552
The video will be online on the CY AS YouTube channel
