Spring 2026 Events
Elana Resnick
Slavic, East-Central European, and Eurasian Studies and European Studies
Time: 12:00-2:00
Location: Gambrell 429
Sustainability has become a touchstone for development worldwide, promising an antidote to environmental degradation and capitalism’s excess: waste. Refusing Sustainability offers a different account of both sustainability and waste by uncovering the intersections of international environmental reforms and racialized labor. In Bulgaria, Romani women comprise the bulk of the country’s waste workers, while anti-Roma racism casts them as socially disposable. Yet without their labor, the country cannot meet the sustainability targets required by the European Union. Drawing on twenty years of fieldwork—including eleven months working alongside Romani women street sweepers, and years embedded in waste organizations, political campaigns, Roma NGOs, and activist groups—this talk approaches Romani life-worlds as sites of creative production. In doing so, it illuminates broader dynamics of post-socialist racial capitalism, progressive environmentalism, democratic failures, mutual aid, and the power of women’s friendships.
Magdalena Stawkowski
Slavic, East-Central European, and Eurasian Studies
Time: 4:30-5:30pm
Location: Gambrell 429
Description:
In the aftermath of the Soviet Union’s collapse, Kazakhstan inherited the remnants of one of the world’s most contaminated landscapes: the Semipalatinsk Test Site, known locally as the Polygon. Resigned to dispossession, residents have chosen to remain on the abandoned nuclear test site, despite the isolation and the radioactive environment, rather than face marginalization or the rigors of a neoliberal world.
Atomic Collective examines this nuclear legacy through a decade-long ethnographic examination of the village of Koian, situated on the border of the test site. Facing residual radiation all around them and isolation, Koianers persist, reshaping their pastoral existence among the ruins and scientific debates surrounding genetic damage. Drawing on first-hand accounts and archival research, this book explores the resilience and everyday survival strategies of a community left behind to fend for itself in the shadow of nuclear testing. It offers a unique perspective on life in a nuclear zone and poses fundamental questions about human resilience and the impact of historical events on a collective identity. Atomic Collective sheds light on a community overlooked in the larger Cold War histories of atomic testing.
Magdalena Stawkowski is an associate professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of South Carolina. She earned her PhD from the University of Colorado Boulder in 2014 and has held roles at the Danish Institute for International Studies; the Center for Slavic, Eurasian, and East European Studies at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill; and the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University, as a MacArthur and Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow. Specializing in cultural and medical anthropology, Stawkowski focuses on militarized and nuclear spaces, the political economy of health, and the socio-cultural legacies of Soviet era nuclear testing in Kazakhstan, where she has conducted more than a decade of fieldwork.
Her recent book, Atomic Collective: Radioactive Life in Kazakhstan, examines how communities near the former Semipalatinsk Test Site navigate contaminated landscapes. Her work has been recognized with the Anthropological Responses to Health Emergencies Policy Award from the Society for Medical Anthropology. She has collaborated on international projects examining Cold War radioactive legacies in Kazakhstan, the Marshall Islands, and French Polynesia. Currently, she is engaged in collaborative and comparative research on tritium bioaccumulation and biomagnification in the Semipalatinsk Test Site region and the Savannah River Site in South Carolina.
Thomas Garcia, Ph. D., a professor of ethnomusicology, guitarist, and luthier, specializing in Brazilian and Portuguese music from Miami University (in Ohio).
Latin American, Caribbean, and U.S. Latinx Studies
Time: 4:30-6:00pm
Location: Russell House Theater
Fall 2025 Events
Dr. Yvonne Kamugisha: Founding and Artistic Director of Fashion Diplomacy Renaissance Initiatives
African Studies
TIme: 4:00pm
Location: Anne Frank Center
Dr. Kamugisha’s research critically examines U.S. influence and the role of religious actors in reconciliation and genocide prevention in Burundi, emphasizing regional dynamics that affect peacebuilding through judicial processes. She founded and runs organizations that use fashion and sport to foster cultural understanding, empowerment, and restorative relationships between states, promoting dialogue, healing, and crosscultural engagement.
Dr. Catherine S. Ramírez:Professor of Latin American and Latino Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Latin American, Caribbean, and U.S. Latinx Studies
Time: 5:00pm
Location: Hollings Library Program Room
Abstract: Populist politicians often warn that migrants will steal native workers' jobs. Even though machines have long threatened to replace workers (and have done so in some industries), few, if any, populist politicians claim to be anti-automation. This talk explores this discrepancy by looking at labor and extraction in Latinx speculative fiction. Inspired by Afrofuturist visions of a more inclusive future, I examine the slow violence and permanent temporariness of undocumentedness and invite you to join me in imagining a future not without migrants, but without undocumentedness.
Dr. Lanie Millar: University of Oregon
Latin American, Caribbean, and U.S. Latinx Studies
Time: 3:30pm
Location: Petrigru Room 213
Co-Sponsored by the Portuguese Program, the Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures, and the Walker Institute
Dr. Noah Gardner
Middle East and Islamic World Studies
Time: 4:30pm
Location: Petigru Room 213
Co-Sponsored by the Department of Religious Studies
Jan Banning, Photographer/Speaker
African Studies
Time: 4:15 - 6:00 P.M.
Location: Gambrell Hall 412
Description: Dutch photographer Jan Banning speaks about the role that social advocacy and commentary play in his artistic photography of themes such as Postgenocide Rwanda, the US Criminal Justice System, and National Identities.
Dr. Cecilia Márquez, Author
Latin American, Caribbean, and U.S. Latinx Studies
Time: 4:30-6:00pm
Location: Gambrell 429
Co-Sponsored by: The Walker Institute, Southern Studies, Honors College, History Center, Center for Civil Rights History & Research
Speakers:
Jae Won Chung (Rutgers University)
Jingtao Harry Gu (William and Hobart Colleges)
Jie Guo (University of South Carolina)
Jung Joon Lee (Rhode Island School of Design)
Minna Lee (Princeton University)
Sohl Lee (Stony Brook University)
Asian Studies
Location: Gambrell 431
28th Annual Comparative Literature Conference
The 2025-2026 annual Comparative Literature Conference will include two main events,
a symposium on global Asian photography in the early fall of 2025 and a graduate symposium
in spring 2026.
Transnational Visual Culture
Across Korea, Hong Kong, and Burma
A Symposium
Transnationalism as a methodological approach, a circulation of images/objects, and a distributed network of scholars has been an important development in the field of Asian Studies. To be held August 22-23, 2025 at the University of South Carolina, this symposium on transnational Asian visual culture will reflect, and build on, this twofold current in Asian studies and the studies of global visual culture in North America. It also seeks to reconceptualize multiple temporalities of global modernity by exploring photographic image-making and image-circulation and compel decolonial imaginations from a transnational perspective. This in-person interdisciplinary conference will bring together speakers and discussants specializing in visual culture, Korean Studies, art history, comparative literature, Asian studies, and related fields, as we collectively explore images of, from, and beyond Korea, Hong Kong, and Burma. The conference will consist of three sessions, a roundtable discussion between speakers and graduate students, and a visit to USC’s Moving Image Research Collections (MIRC) to explore footage from their military and other collections.
Sponsors
Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, USC
Association for Asian Studies-Northeast Asia Council (AAS-NEAC)
Walker Institute of International and Area Studies, USC
Moving Image Research Collection, USC
Visit our Area Studies Events Archive to learn more about previous Area Studies Events that the Walker Institute of International and Area Studies has hosted.