Anna Tsing, an author and anthropology professor at the University of California at Santa Cruz, delivered a lecture for the Wolf Humanities Center's Dr. S.T. Lee Distinguished Lecture Series in the Humanities as the opener to this year's forum on keywords.
Tsing's lecture, which was co-sponsored by Penn's Department of Anthropology and EnviroLab, focused on "concrete" as a keyword, exploring its use as a medium and in social context. It took place at the Penn Museum on Sept. 18 and drew around 100 attendees.
Tsing is the co-author of "Field Guide to the Patchy Anthropocene: The New Nature" and co-director of the Center for Southeast Asian Coastal Interactions at UC Santa Cruz. During the forum, she explained how her current research in Sorong, Indonesia uncovered the strength of concrete as a building material but also its speed of decay.
"Concrete is long lasting," Tsing said. "Concrete exemplifies ability to withstand pressure and endure across all kinds of disturbance, water, wind, fire, but the minute we get up close and personal, these abstractions tend to fall apart."
She shared pictures from her work in the field in Indonesia and the cultural and linguistic importance of concrete. The event ended with a 30-minute question and answer section with audience members, most of whom were faculty and graduate students.
Tsing told The Daily Pennsylvanian that she found the audience to be very engaging, adding that she enjoyed the discourse she shared with audience members during and after the forum.
“There were people coming from a variety of different fields and backgrounds. The questions were a lot of fun, ranging from the most concrete to the most theoretical,” Tsing said.
Candidate for a master's in behavioral and decision science graduate student Gesyada Siregar, who is originally from Indonesia, said that she found the lecture enriching and that it gave her another perspective of her home country.
“The talk gives us a lens to see the practical aspects of modern development,” Siregar said. “It was also very poetic in a way so I found it really interesting.”
The Wolf Humanities Center — Penn's hub for interdisciplinary humanities research and public programming — holds various seminars and events for the campus community and the Philadelphia community at large. Each year, the center runs a forum on a particular topic.
Topic director Lisa Mitchell said that she proposed this year’s forum on keywords to explore how keywords and the larger fields they reflect and shape change over time, as well as their cross-cultural significance.
“I think Professor Tsing did a great job taking on really new ways of thinking about keywords and the work they do in our world,” Mitchell said. “She did an excellent job of getting us started for the year.”
Undergraduate Humanities Forum Director Julia Verkholantsev emphasized the ways in which undergraduate students can become more involved at the Wolf Humanities Center.
“It’s a perfect opportunity to learn to be young scholars,” Verkholantsev said. “We have a lot of faculty and graduate student involvement, and I think it would be great if we could have more undergraduate students involved here.”
The next event in the series will feature Ben Zimmerman, a language columnist from the Wall Street Journal, on Oct. 9 at the Perelman Center for Political Science and Economics.
The Daily Pennsylvanian is an independent, student-run newspaper. Please consider making a donation to support the coverage that shapes the University. Your generosity ensures a future of strong journalism at Penn.
Donate