Aqueous Territory: Learning from Louisiana's Colonial Histories and Watery Extremes

全球气候变化正在影响西方流行的水是稳定资源的文化观念。在英国，自2007年以来，由于降雨量每年增加17%，每年都发生重大洪水事件（卫报，2020年2月）;在美国南部，自1970年以来，袭击墨西哥湾沿岸的飓风增加了15%（华盛顿邮报，2019年9月20日）。2020年）。尽管两国公民都在呼吁政治家通过改善基础设施来应对这种日益极端的天气现象，但平淡的政治反应戏剧性地揭示了水的持续存在以及控制其流动性的能力仍然被视为理所当然的程度。在密西西比河谷盆地（MRVB）-今天受气候变化严重打击的地区-自1690年以来，水的不稳定性就作为土著人民和殖民定居者生计的一个决定性因素被历史和直观地记录下来。拟议中的水域网络旨在研究和询问过去350年来在MRVB中发展的社会中水的作用的材料和口述历史：来自农学家-工程师A-S的地图和文本。乐页杜普拉茨（1695年至1775年）的涂鸦壁画的当代非洲裔美国艺术家B。自2005年卡特里娜飓风（Hurricane Katrina）被洪水淹没以来，建筑物中的Odum被遗弃。MRVB的这些水的历史形象化的环境挑战和不公平的水分配及其控制机制的社会后果;更有希望的是，这个长期的历史记录的部分也提供了一个蓝图，成功地管理通过文化，基础设施和环境行动的极端气候。通过汇集来自艺术，人文，社会和硬科学的研究人员来调查历史，生物，语言，城市工程，讲故事，政治，环境，警务和人体之间的水界面，网络将超越自然/文化的鸿沟--物理上面对MRVB的生态系统，同时批判性地审视人类对它的依赖。该网络的研究认为，MRVB的历史和目前的关系，水极端可以富有成效地比较，英国河口社区今天面临的问题，包括：资源分配，洪水控制和可持续保护。这个由跨学科团队研究的微观分析比较焦点将使用MRVB过去和现在的例子作为在日益潮湿的英国塑造社会气候相互作用的蓝图。该网络将通过经常开会交流思想来实现其集体研究目标，最初于2021年秋季在线。沿着其他受邀的现场专家，网络成员将于2022年5月在路易斯安那州举行会议。通过集体参观各种历史遗址，这些历史遗址是关于含水对MRVB重要性的辩论中的热点-例如新奥尔良的堤坝-以及来自土著和非洲裔美国人社区的艺术家和活动家的会议，我们将确定实际，历史和社会问题之间的接口，这些问题管理今天在MRVB中处理含水。在接下来的10个月里，网络成员将发展他们的个人研究，包括创意和学术写作以及音乐创作。他们将通过在线会议保持联系，包括在英国河口社区处理类似水生主题的同事。在MRVB和英国的含水性集体研究结果将发表在由PI和Co-I编辑的“人文”特刊上（同行评审）。该网络的研究还将于2023年5月在英国埃克塞特大学的一次会议/表演中展示。免费的，社区驱动的性能将具有网络参与者的诗歌，散文和音乐作品，由当地学生音乐团体解释。

Global climate change is affecting the popular Western cultural perception of water as a stable resource. In the UK, major flood events have occurred every year since 2007 due to rainfall increases of 17% per year (Guardian, Feb. 2020); in the Southern US, hurricanes battering the Gulf Coast have increased by 15% since 1970 (Washington Post, Sept. 2020). Though citizens of both countries are calling on politicians to counteract such increasingly extreme weather phenomena through better infrastructure, the lackluster political response dramatically reveals the extent to which water's consistent presence, and the ability to control its fluidity, are still taken for granted. In the Mississippi River Valley Basin (MRVB)--a region hard hit by climate change today--water's instability has been historically and visually documented from 1690 as a determinant factor in the livelihood of Indigenous Peoples and colonial settlers. The proposed Aqueous Territory Network aims to study and interrogate the material and oral histories of water's role in those societies that developed in the MRVB during the last 350 years: from the maps and texts of agronomist-engineer A-S. Le Page du Pratz (1695-1775) to the graffiti murals of contemporary African American artist B. Odums in buildings left abandoned since they were flooded in Hurricane Katrina (2005). These aqueous histories of the MRVB visualize the environmental challenges and social consequences of inequitable water distribution and its control mechanisms; more hopefully, parts of this long historical record also offer a blueprint for successfully managing an intemperate climate through cultural, infrastructural, and environmental actions. By bringing together researchers from the arts, humanities, social, and hard sciences to investigate the watery interfaces between history, biology, language, urban engineering, story-telling, politics, environment, policing, and the human body, the network will transcend the nature/culture divide--physically confronting the MRVB's ecosystem while critically examining human dependencies on it.The network's research contends that the MRVB's historical and current relationship to aqueous extremes can be productively compared with issues that British estuarine communities are facing today, including: resource allocation, flood control, and sustainable conservation. This micro-analytic comparative focus, researched by an interdisciplinary team, will use past and present examples in the MRVB as a blueprint for shaping socio-climatic interactions in an increasingly wet Britain.The network will accomplish its collective research goals by meeting frequently to exchange ideas, initially online in Fall 2021. Along with other invited field experts, the network members will then meet in Louisiana in May 2022. Through collective visits to various historical sites which are flashpoints in the debate on the importance of aqueousness to the MRVB--such as New Orleans's levees--as well as a conference featuring artists and activists from Indigenous and African American communities, we will identify interfaces between practical, historical, and social concerns that govern the treatment of aqueousness in the MRVB today. Over the next 10 months, the network members will develop their individual research, including creative and scholarly writing as well as musical composition. They shall keep in touch through online meetings involving colleagues dealing with similar themes of aqueousness in British estuarine communities. Collective research results on aqueousness in the MRVB and Britain will be published in a special issue of 'Humanities' (peer-reviewed), edited by the Pi and Co-I. The network's research will also be presented at the University of Exeter, UK, at a conference/performance in May 2023. The free, community-driven performance will feature network participants' poetry, prose, and music compositions, interpreted by local student music groups.