March 25, 2026 5:30 pm - 6:00 pm ET
Room 200 Barnum Hall
163 Packard Avenue
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Join us March 25 to hear a special presentation by Jolene Rickard (Tuscarora, History of Art & Visual Studies, Cornell University) entitled "Creative Defiance as Sensory Ecologies." She will be in discussion with Claudia Mattos Avolese (SMFA, Visual and Material Studies).

This talk challenges the skim of TEK and/or Indigenous knowledge in the environmental movement. Setting the discussion in the broader framework of what happened at COP30 and the North Dakota Access Pipeline and then shifting to a place-based case study concerning an AI data factory near Haudenosaunee territory, Rickard considers epistemological gaps and the ways they can be negotiated.

Jolene Rickard is an Associate Professor at Cornell University in the departments of History of Art & Visual Studies, and the former Director of the American Indian and Indigenous Studies Program 2008-2020 (AIISP). She is a visual historian, artist and curator interested in the intersection of Indigenous art, cultural theory and the forces of settler colonialism. Her research centers on the expression of multiple sovereignties within Indigenous art and culture globally.

 

Organized by the University Ecologies project. Co-sponsored by the Departments of Anthropology, English, History of Art and Architecture, Race Colonialism and Diaspora, Theater Dance and Performance Studies,

Visual and Material Studies, and by the Archaeology & Environmental Studies Programs.

Open to the Tufts community. For questions, contact Silvia.Bottinelli@tufts.edu.