Conference - Global Waterways: Between The Natural World and the Built Environment

A two-day event hosted by the Humanities Institute at Stony Brook 

Global Waterways will explore the ways in which waterways are imagined, traversed, transformed, engineered and lived in different political and historical contexts. It brings together scholars whose work addresses the relationships between waterways and culture, between rivers and aesthetics, between water and resistance. How do human communities conceive of themselves next to and together with waterways? How are waterways linked to national imaginaries? How do waterways generate conflict between states, and local riverine communities? And How does hydraulic engineering – large-scale infrastructures like dams, drainage schemes, and canals, for example – impact local populations and biodiversity?

Featuring:

Keynote Address by Sunil Amrith, Renu and Anand Dhawan Professor of History Professor of History (Yale University)

Sunil Amrith's research focuses on the movements of people and the ecological processes that have connected South and Southeast Asia, and has expanded to encompass global environmental history. He has published in the fields of environmental history, the history of migration, and the history of public health. His most recent book, The Burning Earth (2024, Norton) won the 2025 Dayton Literary Peace Prize for Nonfiction.

Other Participants:

Lisa Blackmore (University of Virginia); Ashley Carse (Vanderbilt University); Jörg Dünne (Humboldt University Berlin); Darcey Evans (Stony Brook University); Shimelis Gulema (Stony Brook University); Aditya Ramesh (University of Washington); Amanda Smith (University of California Santa Cruz); Karina Yager (Stony Brook University)

CONFERENCE SCHEDULE:

March 26, 2026

3:00 PM  Welcome

3:30 - 4:30 PM: Panel 1: Water Rights / Waters’ Rights

Moderator: Anna Aldrich, Stony Brook University

Ashley Carse, Vanderbilt University, The Age of Mitigation: Global Shipping and a River on Life Support

Amanda M. Smith, University of California Santa Cruz, Meander: The Right of the Atrato Not To Be Known

4:30 - 5:00 PM: Coffee Break 

5:00- 6:30 PM: Keynote Address by Sunil Amrith, Yale University, Whose Planetary Consciousness?

6:30 - 7:00 PM: Reception

Day 2 March 27, 2026

9:30 - 11:00 AM: Panel 2: Hydroengineering Global Waterways

Moderator: Karina Yager, Stony Brook University

Aditya Ramesh, University of Washington, Agrarian Pasts, Environmental Futures: Genealogies of the Green Revolution to Salt and Energy in Postcolonial South India

Shimelis Gulema, Stony Brook University, Hydro/Geopolitics on the Nile: A Trilateral Crisis in the Making

Darcey Evans, Stony Brook University, Undammed: Colonization and Renewal on the Klamath River

11:00 - 11:30 AM - Coffee Break 

11:30  AM - 12:30 PM Panel 3: Water Commons

Moderator: Samuel Espíndola Hernández, Stony Brook University

Lisa Blackmore, University of Essex, UK, Hydrocommoning Through Pumping: Performative Hydraulics in São Paulo’s Urban Rivers

Jörg Dünne, Humboldt University-Berlin, Are Rivers Waterways? Fluviality and Infrastructure According to Domingo Faustino Sarmiento and Bernardo Canal Feijóo

12:30  PM - Lunch Reception

This event is funded by a Seed Grant from the Office of the Vice President for Research (OVPR) at Stony Brook University, and the SBU Fine Arts, Humanities, and (lettered) Social Sciences (FAHSS) Research and Interdisciplinary Initiatives Fund. Sponsored by Hispanic Languages and Literature, Latin American and Caribbean Studies (LACS), Native American and Indigenous Studies (NAIS), the Center for Changing Systems of Power (CCSP), and HISB.