The Hydrologic Cycle and Historical Societies Workshop
Global Asia Initiative, Duke University
February 18, 2022 (9:30 am-3:30 pm) to February 19, 2022 (9:30 am-5:00 pm)

Friday, Feb 18, 2022 

–Short Introduction by Prasenjit Duara

Panel 1: Community and Commercial Waters (9.45 – 11.15 am)
Moderator: James C. Scott, Yale University

• Wind-Water-Carbon Commons: Watershed Sacred Forests and Village Polities in Monsoon Asia (Chris Coggins, Bard College at Simon’s Rock)
• Drinking a Hydrologic Cycle from a Bottle (Ling Zhang, Boston College)

Panel 2: Other Waters (11.30- 1.00 pm)
Moderator: James Wescoat, MIT

• Slow Hydrology: Frozen Forms and Flowing Floes (Philip Steinberg, Durham University, UK)
• Humid Cultures and the Yangtze Valley (Chris Courtney, Durham University, UK)

Panel 3: Hypersea: Water within and without us (2 pm -3.30 pm)
Moderator: Philip Steinberg, Durham University, UK

• Towards an Historical Geography of Human Biological Water (Jim Wescoat, MIT)
• Ocean Boosters (Helen M. Rozwadowski, University of Connecticut)

Saturday, Feb 19, 2022

Panel 4: Rivers, Land and Seas (9.30 am-12 pm)
Moderator: Murugesu Sivapalan, University of Illinois

• The Flood Pulse (Jim Scott, Yale University)
• Decolonizing Rain (Dilip da Cunha, Author, The Invention of Rivers: Alexander’s Eye and Ganga’s Descent -2019)
• Coasts, Estuaries, the Monsoon and ‘discovering’ the River’s pulse in South Asia (Rohan D’Souza, Kyoto University)

Panel 5: Dams (1—2.30 pm)
Moderator: Yuan Chen, Duke University

• State-Building in Times of Climatic Changes: the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, Infrastructural Power and Environmental Justice (Harry Verhoeven, Columbia University)
• Inland Hydroscapes in Socialist China (Arunabh Ghosh, Harvard University)

Panel 6: The Hydro-social Cycle (2.45-4.45 pm)
Moderator: Prasenjit Duara, Duke University

• Historical Sociohydrology: Slow-Fast Dynamics and Emergent Phenomena in the Hydrosocial Cycle (Murugesu Sivapalan, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)
• Mao’s War against Erosion: Water and Soil Conservation and the Hydrologic Cycle on the Loess Plateau (Micah Muscolino, University of California, San Diego)
• Typhoons, Seasonality, and the Hydrological Cycle in Southern Chinese History (Clark Alejandrino, Trinity College)