OCR Event Manager - Master Calendar

Lecture by Erin Brock Carlson (English, West Virginia University); part of HRI's Story & Place event series. This talk is supported by Humanities Without Walls and the Mellon Foundation.

Talk Abstract
A place—its physical landscape, its natural resources, its social fabric—shapes how we move about the world, and how we solve problems. Extraction communities face a particular challenge, as landscapes, resources, and social relationships are hauled away, leaving community members to grapple with widespread injustice. The Appalachian region of the United States embodies this dynamic, featuring a rich history of not only extractive interests acting upon communities, but also everyday people organizing against those interests. Integral to those organizing efforts is an embrace of place and the knowledge place holds. Place-based knowledge is a form of rhetorical invention that prioritizes accountability to community, making it an important aspect of organizing work. 

My presentation draws on three community-based research projects in central Appalachia, each rooted in a different orientation to organizing: economic justice, environmental justice, and social justice. Based on trends across these projects, I offer a heuristic that unpacks the relationship-building aspect of place-based organizing, which has been under-represented in theoretical conversations. The framework articulates the work of coalition-building via: dwelling in a place; caring for its people; and building collective power by drawing on community-based expertise developed through dwelling and caring. 

In this presentation, I offer rich examples for each of these actions, arguing that: 1) place-based knowledge is a legitimate form of expertise, and 2) to embrace this expertise is a deeply political project, especially in extraction communities where people find themselves in a deficit as extraction interests siphon away resources, people, and community vibrancy. Ultimately, I offer a framework inspired by the work of Appalachian community organizers that might be a valuable tool for strategizing around place-based knowledge in other regions, including the rural Midwest.

About the Speaker
Erin Brock Carlson’s research centers the relationships between place, technology, and power, focusing on how communities work together to address complex public problems through communication and community organizing. She uses community-based and participatory approaches in her research.

Recent and ongoing projects include facilitating cultural equity conversations across West Virginian artists; documenting the experiences of West Virginians affected by natural gas pipeline development; and advocating for place-oriented understandings of public health data. Erin is also working on a book manuscript articulating the value of place-based knowledges to Appalachian organizing and activism during regional economic transition, drawing from a yearlong participatory photovoice project with a group of community organizers.

She teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in professional, technical, and multimedia writing, as well as Digital Humanities and accompanying research methods.