The Center for Environmental Humanities at Brown (CEHAB) presents a two-day hybrid symposium gathering scholars, artists, and activists from a range of disciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives and sites of analysis to consider the scope and scale of mining and extractive zones in the digital age.

Given the alarming rise of AI and the degradation of diverse forms of life — including the calamitous effects of lithium mining, data centers, and the pervasive exploitation of water, rare minerals, and other non-renewable resources, as well as a host of impacts from other technologies of extraction — the symposium seeks to highlight collective forms of refusal and resistance amidst ongoing catastrophe. Submerged voices, perspectives, and intelligences will be featured against the monoculture of the machine.

The symposium will host an artist’s talk and performance, scholarly panel presentations, a conversation with anti-extractive activists, an online flash panel, and a keynote presentation to facilitate close study and engaged conversation toward alternate epistemologies, approaches, and practices that are crucial for understanding and engaging our current global/local climate of extraction and the transitions in the global (dis)order.

Free and open to the public. Registration is required and opens soon.

For questions or to request special services, accommodations, or assistance, please contact environmental-humanities@brown.edu or (401) 863-6070.

Image: Video still from Glacial Resurgence — Prelude (2025) by Teresa Borasino