Disarming Toxic Empire

March 2122, 2024 Austin, Texas

Schedule

March 21, 2024

Time Session Information
4:30 pm – 5:00 pm

Check-In

Susman Godfrey Atrium (TNH 2.100), University of Texas School of Law

5:00 pm – 7:00 pm

Welcome and Introduction

Francis Auditorium (TNH 2.114), University of Texas School of Law

Presenters

  • Karen Engle

    Minerva House Drysdale Regents Chair in Law and Founder and Co-director, the Bernard and Audre Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice The University of Texas School of Law

  • Neville Hoad

    Associate Professor of English and Co-director, the Bernard and Audre Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice The University of Texas at Austin

Keynote Lecture: "Mobilizing Civil Society to Prohibit and Eliminate Nuclear Weapons"

Francis Auditorium (TNH 2.114), University of Texas School of Law

Sponsored by Swedish Excellence Endowment, The Barbro Osher Pro Suecia Foundation Excellence Endowment, and Texas Global.

Approved for 1.5 MCLE hours

Swedish lawyer and nuclear disarmament advocate Beatrice Fihn reflected on her Nobel Peace Prize-winning work toward the 2017 adoption of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. As Executive Director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), Fihn led the mobilization of civil society, diplomats, scientists, and legal experts in support of the treaty. In her lecture, Fihn spoke on the ongoing threats posed by nuclear weapons, and on the power of movement-based advocacy to fight them.

  • Beatrice Fihn

    Director Lex International

    Former Executive Director International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN)

Respondents

  • Ivana Nikolić Hughes

    Director of Frontiers of Science and Senior Lecturer in Discipline in the Department of Chemistry Columbia University

    President Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

  • Vasuki Nesiah

    Professor of Practice NYU Gallatin School of Individualized Study

  • Bedi Racule

    Climate Justice Enabler Pacific Council of Churches

    Co-coordinator Nuclear Truth Project

  • Annelise Riles

    Professor of Law and Anthropology and Associate Provost for Global Affairs Northwestern University

March 22, 2024

Time Session Information
8:00 am – 9:00 am

Welcome Breakfast

Sheffield-Massey Room (TNH 2.111), University of Texas School of Law

9:00 am – 10:30 am

Arts, Archives, and the Atom

Gayle Classroom (TNH 2.137), University of Texas School of Law

This panel explored the artistic and documentary channels that have been and continue to be used to challenge nuclear and environmental toxicity. From the Second World War to the present, arts and archives have defined human experiences and imaginaries around the nuclear, empowering viewers, readers, listeners, and learners to refigure their relationships to past and future generations affected by nuclear toxicity. Digging into the social and political contexts that shape these artistic and documentary endeavors, panelists considered how censorship and secrecy, but also humor and pedagogy, determine which memories are lost and which survive, from Japan and the Pacific Islands to the Navajo Nation.

Moderator

  • Neville Hoad

    Associate Professor of English and Co-director, the Bernard and Audre Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice The University of Texas at Austin

Panelists

  • Don CarletonFlash of Light, Wall of Fire: Japanese Photographers and the Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

    J. R. Parten Chair in the Archives of American History and Executive Director, Dolph Briscoe Center for American History The University of Texas at Austin

  • Kirsten CatherHow I Learned to Keep Worrying and Teach the Bomb

    Associate Professor of Asian Studies and Director, Center for East Asian Studies The University of Texas at Austin

  • Anaïs MaurerThe H-Bomb and Humor: The Pacific Arts of Laughing at Nuclear Death

    Assistant Professor of French and Comparative Literature Rutgers University

    Faculty Associate Center for Nuclear Studies, Columbia University

  • Will WilsonConnecting the Dots for a Just Transition

    Associate Professor of Studio Art The University of Texas at Austin

10:30 am – 10:45 am

Coffee Break

10:45 am – 12:15 pm

Atomic Landscapes: Development and Destruction

Gayle Classroom (TNH 2.137), University of Texas School of Law

This panel engaged with some of the colonial and post-colonial histories of various landscapes that have been shaped by nuclear technologies. It considered landscapes not only in terms of the long half-life of radiation in land and water, and displacement of communities near nuclear sites, but also in the ways that nuclear technologies and their imaginaries have shaped how people conceive of themselves, their national identities in the postcolonial era, and their relationship to land, property, and the world. Panelists explored the nuanced, complex, and often quotidian relationships people have with nuclear technologies in various sites, from Ghana’s Atomic Junction to the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation. Moving beyond a bi-polar story of nuclear rivalry, these histories provided a more complete vision of the postcolonial atomic landscape.

Moderator

  • Bruce J. Hunt

    Professor of History The University of Texas at Austin

Panelists

  • Austin R. CooperSaharan Fallout: French Explosions in Algeria and Nuclear Weapons in the Global Cold War

    Assistant Professor of History Purdue University

  • Abena Dove Osseo-AsareThe Proliferation of Atomic Lands: A View from Ghana

    Professor of History The University of Texas at Austin

  • Hebatalla TahaNuclear Imaginaries in the Middle East

    Associate Senior Lecturer Centre for Advanced Middle Eastern Studies and the Department of Political Science, Lund University

  • Ella WeberThe Missiles on Our Rez: Nuclear Colonialism on the Fort Berthold Reservation

    Research Fellow, Nuclear Princeton Princeton University

12:15 pm – 1:45 pm

Lunch Break

Sheffield-Massey Room (TNH 2.111) and Patman Family Plaza, University of Texas School of Law

1:45 pm – 3:15 pm

Nuclear Colonialism: Remembering, Resisting, and Repairing

Gayle Classroom (TNH 2.137), University of Texas School of Law

This panel centered Indigenous responses to what is often called “nuclear colonialism,” defined by Danielle Endres (2009) as “a system of domination through which governments and corporations target indigenous peoples and their lands to maintain the nuclear production process.” Drawing connections between generations and geographies, panelists discussed different ways that Indigenous peoples have excavated cultural memory and mobilized transnational solidarity to resist and repair the harms wrought by nuclear toxicity. The panel emphasized Indigenous visions that animate calls for just transitions and futures, from the Pacific Islands to the territories of the Sahtu Dene.

Moderator

  • Luis E. Cárcamo-Huechante

    Director of Native American and Indigenous Studies, Associate Professor of Spanish University of Texas at Austin

Panelists

  • David L. EngAbsolute Apology, Absolute Forgiveness

    Richard L. Fisher Professor of English and Faculty Director of the Program in Asian American Studies University of Pennsylvania

  • Jennifer Graber“Only a Piece of the Total Prophecy”: Ghost Dancing Against Nuclear Waste

    Gwyn Shive, Anita Nordan Lindsay, and Joe & Cherry Gray Professor of Religious Studies and Associate Director of the Program in Native American and Indigenous Studies The University of Texas at Austin

  • Rebecca HogueCreative Arts and Anti-Nuclear Genealogies in South Australia

    Postdoctoral Fellow Mahindra Humanities Center at Harvard University

  • Ian ZabarteNuclear Awareness and Risk Management

    Secretary of State Western Shoshone National Council of the Western Bands of the Shoshone Nation of Indians

    Secretary Native Community Action Council

3:15 pm – 3:30 pm

Coffee Break

3:30 pm – 5:00 pm

Cold War Afterlives: Intergenerational Movements for Disarmament and Environmental Justice

Gayle Classroom (TNH 2.137), University of Texas School of Law

This panel resurfaced historical and contemporary mobilizations for disarmament to offer possible channels for intergenerational advocacy toward peace and environmental justice. Tracing disarmament and justice movements across generations—beginning in the Cold War and ending with the contemporary moment—panelists explored the histories, solidarities, and tensions that suggest disarmament’s link to other justice movements. Panelists considered intergenerational implications of Cold-War feminist activism against nuclear weapons, historical and contemporary local activism for nuclear-free zones, and transnational movements for peace and justice.

Moderator

  • Cooper Christiancy

    Postgraduate Fellow The Bernard and Audre Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice

Panelists

  • Itty AbrahamFrom Peace to Justice: Changing Priorities for South Asian Nuclear Studies

    Professor, School for the Future of Innovation in Society and Senior Global Futures Scholar Arizona State University

  • Karen Engle"Private" Diplomacy and Nuclear Disarmament: Revisiting the Cold War Activism of Women for a Meaningful Summit

    Minerva House Drysdale Regents Chair in Law and Founder and Co-director, the Bernard and Audre Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice The University of Texas School of Law

  • Vanja HamzićAn “Islamic Bomb” and the Politics of Scientific Dissent: Pakistan's Feminist and Peace Disquietudes amidst an Unending Cold War

    Reader in Law, History and Anthropology SOAS University of London

  • Hirokazu MiyazakiCity Diplomacy for Nuclear Abolition

    Kay Davis Professor of Anthropology Northwestern University

6:30 pm – 8:00 pm

"A Body in Fukushima"

CRASHBOX Theatre, 5305 Bolm Rd. #12, Austin, TX 78721

Performance by

Talkback Facilitator

  • Rosemary Candelario

    Associate Professor of Performance as Public Practice The University of Texas at Austin

9:00pm

"A Body in Fukushima" (second performance)

CRASHBOX Theatre, 5305 Bolm Rd. #12, Austin, TX 78721

Performance by