Space is limited; RSVP Required. Please contact Program Manager, Caitlin Palo, at cpalo@uw.edu for more information or to sign up.

What does it mean for a river to display, strive for, indicate, or desire a future state? What actions and gestures and ways of thought can people practice that take seriously a river’s agency and the life chances of its multispecies denizens? This field tour will bring us to the rerouted, constricted, and polluted Duwamish River to learn to see its vibrant lifeworlds and hydrologic possibilities. Thinking with José Esteban Muñoz’s theorization of brown commons as queer ecologies, we will engage in field science and ecopoetic investigations of the past, present, and future river.

Led by Cleo Woelfle-Erskine (School of Marine and Environmental Affairs) and July Hazard (Comparative History of Ideas and Program on the Environment).

Cleo Woelfle-Erskine’s research focuses on ecology and politics of rivers and their multi-species inhabitants. Trained in ecology, geomorphology, social science, and feminist science and technology studies, he facilitates collaborative research in partnership with Native nations, agencies, and citizen scientists. His forthcoming book is Underflow: Transfiguring riverine relations, imagining queer-trans ecologies.

July Hazard is a poet and theorist who teaches in UW’s Comparative History of Ideas Department and the Program on the Environment. July’s current research investigates the altered shorelines of the Black and Duwamish rivers, the assembly of poetic voice under the guidance of animals, and the forest relations of trans and queer youth in rural Appalachia.