Rackham Interdisciplinary Workshops (RIW)

The Political Ecology Workshop (PEW) is an interdisciplinary space for scholars at all career stages with interests in political ecology and related critical approaches to the study of environment-society interactions. PEW brings together a range of divisions across campus, including Anthropology, History, Environment and Sustainability, Political Science, Sociology, and all Area Studies departments and programs. We have founded a collaborative, multidisciplinary community with a shared investment questioning how environments and societies are co-produced and the ways in which power and inequality impact the dynamics and understandings of this co-production. We have run PEW as an RIW for two years and all the workshops have been possible from our committed participants from diverse fields. This year, we intend to develop our membership further by inviting scholars from broader fields and promoting PEW on listservs across campus.

PEW supports graduate student development, including for earlier-stage students seeking interdisciplinary conversations as they develop environment-society research projects and later-stage students seeking to incorporate political ecology into their work. PEW emphasizes dedicated time for graduate students to receive feedback on their work and facilitates faculty-student mentorship. It allows students to access a range of critical environmental studies perspectives they might not have encountered through coursework or departmental activities, and to grow from the feedback and insight of faculty and peers who share this commitment to interdisciplinary scholarship and professional development.

Interdisciplinary Islamic Studies Seminar (IISS) provides opportunities for graduate students and faculty who work across various disciplines and world regions to engage in conversations about Islam. This year's seminar focuses on the topic of “The Emergence of Muslim Identities," exploring how Muslims across various temporal and spatial contexts have made and continue to make sense of themselves and others in light of their faith tradition.

RIW for all things Yiddish (Studies)

This workshop is for clinicians in training who seek to enhance their skills in providing weight-inclusive health and mental health care. No experience is needed - please come to as many or as few sessions are you are able. Looking forward to having you as part of the conversation!

Join us for a public lecture with Megan Ward (Oregon State University.)
"The rise of grief tech, chatbots trained on the words, voices, and memories of lost loved ones, offers the alluring chance to continue a relationship beyond death. Grief tech is new, but that allure is much older, dating at least back to nineteenth-century Spiritualism. Today’s grief tech is connected to its Victorian predecessor by a shared culture of grief - one that seemed to have disappeared. While current psychological practices try to move the bereaved toward closure, Victorian mourning lingered in yearning. Bringing together Alice Stringfellow, a Victorian mother who corresponded her dead son every night, and Joshua Barbeau, a present-day aspiring actor who created a chatbot version of his girlfriend after her death, this talk explores how contemporary technologies might reveal the value (and risks) of using technology to redress the innately human problem of death."