Dartmouth Events

Public Lecture by Dr. Vincanne Adams (UC San Francisco)

Wednesday, May 31, 2023 
10 am - 11:30 am
Haldeman 041 & Zoom (rb.gy/yrewp)

The Swirl: An Alterlife Story of Glyphosate

This talk traces formations of knowledge, activism, and harm associated with the active ingredient in the widely used herbicide Roundup® called glyphosate.  A chemical that is ‘on the move’ with multiple potencies, glyphosate offers interesting opportunities for recognizing the patterns of certainty and momentum around chemical effects and saturations in soils, plants, foods, bodies, forming a swirl of effects and certainties. The swirl is a model of and for how chemical harm often works, with moments of density and stickiness that give way to ephemeral dispersals, contested certainties and soft tissue impacts that appear differently across a wide swath of material engagements. 

Vincanne Adams is Professor of Medical Anthropology in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at UCSF and the Joint Program in Medical Anthropology at UCSF/UC Berkeley. She has published on a wide range of topics from Tibetan Medicine and safe motherhood to the use of metrics in global health, post disaster recovery, and the murky aftereffects of agrochemical industrialism.

Co-Sponsored by the Society of Fellows and the Department of Anthropology. 
For any inquiries, please contact Hiroko Kumaki (Hiroko.Kumaki@Dartmouth.edu).