RICHARD FADOK

15-18 JULY

CONFERENCE

Amsterdam, Netherlands

At the 2024 quadrennial joint meeting of the European Association for the Study of Science and Technology and the Society for Social Studies of Science, I will be presenting a talk titled “When Species Collide: The Architectural Entanglements of Bird-Window Collisions.” This talk is part of the panel “Architecture in the New Climatic Regime: Transforming Material Practices,” co-organized by Cordula Kropp and Albena Yaneva.

23-26 MAY

FIELDWORK

Allentown, Pennsylvania

As part of my ongoing ethnographic project Syntopia, I conducted fieldwork with ornithologists to understand how they study bird-window collisions and experimentally test bird-friendly glass. This fieldwork will appear in my chapter in Urban Animalia.

1 MAY

CRITIQUE

Buffalo, New York

I was invited to serve as a guest critic in the University of Buffalo Sophomore Design Studio’s final review. With insights from ecological urbanism, posthuman studies, and inclusive design, this course challenged students to explore nonhuman species as stakeholders in their exploration of architectural concepts of site and context.

19 APRIL

WORKING GROUP

Ithaca, New York

I joined this year’s gathering of Urban Natures at the Cornell Botanic Garden. Urban Natures is an interdisciplinary working group co-organized by Chloe Ahmann, Ezra Akcan, Romita Ray, and Timur Hammond and sponsored by the Central New York Humanities Corridor.

19 APRIL

FIELDWORK

Ithaca, New York

I interviewed architects and ornithologists associated with the development and implementation of Cornell University’s design and construction standards for bird-friendly design. I was interested in how ornithological science becomes codified into both institutional policy and design practice.

28 NOVEMBER – 3 DECEMBER

FIELDWORK

San Antonio, Texas

I conducted fieldwork at Birdsong Brackenridge, an exhibition of birdhouses designed by professional architects, to learn how environmental conservationists mobilize animal architecture as a communicational medium. Research from this trip, which included interviews with the organizer and all participant architects, will feature in my essay for Noema.

15-19 NOVEMBER

CONFERENCE

Toronto, Canada

For the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association, my colleague Grace Kim-Butler and I co-organized and co-chaired the panel “Badgering Space: Topologies of Human-Animal Encounter.” Fellow speakers included Sarah Franklin, Andrea Pettit, Tanya Richardson, and Hannah Eisler Burnett. We are currently in discussions with an academic press about an edited volume based on our papers.

13-14 NOVEMBER

MEETING

Los Angeles, California

For the second meeting of the Berggruen Institute’s Multispecies Constitution Project, I wrote a short entry on the concept of “syntopia,” which was published in the Multispecies Lexicon. Over two days, we workshopped papers from Cary Wolfe, Caroline Jones, Jonathon Keats, Alyssa Collins, Becca Franks, and Christine Winter.

8-11 NOVEMBER

CONFERENCE

Honolulu, Hawai’i

At the annual meeting of the Society for the Social Studies of Science, I presented a talk on the panel “Evil Animals? Pests of the Sea, Sky, and Land,” organized by Chris Kelty. My talk was titled “Going to Bat for Bats: Pest Activism and the Speciation of Space.”

24 OCTOBER

SEMINAR

Rochester, New York

I shared a draft of my paper on the concept of “syntopia” with an interdisciplinary group of scholars at the Jesse L. Rosenberger Work-in-Progress Seminar, run by the Humanities Center. This paper applies a material-semiotic approach to understand the built environment.

9-15 JULY

PROGRAM

Urbana, Illinois

I applied and received an offer to participate in the Animal Studies Summer Institute at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, where I workshopped a paper on birdhouses, Gaston Bachelard, and nonhuman phenomenology. I also commented on a paper by Yuping Hsu on animal documentaries. My reflection on the event is available on Backchannels.

5-6 MAY

SYMPOSIUM

Rochester, New York

I was a moderator and commentator for a panel on “Contestation” at Lines of Property, an architectural history symposium organized by Peter Christensen, Claire Zimmerman, and Lisa Haber-Thomson at the University of Rochester.

27 APRIL

SYMPOSIUM

Brooklyn, New York

A handful of students from my seminar-studio “Space/Power/Species” and I took the train to New York City from Philadelphia to participate in Speculating the Environment, a cross-disciplinary symposium at Pratt that brought together scientists, designers, artists, and writers to discuss environmental futures. I gave an introduction to the course, and my students gave brief talks and later exhibited their speculative design projects at the reception.

14 APRIL

COLLOQUIUM

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

I was invited to give a talk to the Humanities, Urbanism, and Design Initiative’s colloquium at the University of Pennsylvania. This interdisciplinary space put designers from architecture and landscape architecture into conversation with social scientists and scholars in the humanities.

21 MARCH

SEMINAR

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

At the University of Pennsylvania, I presented a paper-in-progress on birdhouses for the Wolf Humanities Center’s Mellon Research Seminar on heritage. Lindsay Ceballos offered a commentary.

16-17 MARCH

MEETING

Los Angeles, California

During the first meeting of the Berggruen Institute’s Multispecies Constitution Project, I gave a pecha kucha on the concept of “syntopia” and participated in two days of deliberation around the possibility of a political charter for nonhuman protection.

24 FEBRUARY

SYMPOSIUM

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

With other postdoctoral fellows and graduate students in the Wolf Humanities Center at the University of Pennsylvania, I co-organized a day-long series of talks on the topic of cultural heritage. Speakers included Jamal Elias, Emily Wilson, NaOmi Richardson, Krystal Strong, Francesca Ammon, Richard Leventhal, Felipe Rojas Silva, Alex Chavez, Kim TallBear, and Barbie Zelizer.

21 FEBRUARY

CRITIQUE

Ann Arbor, Michigan (via Zoom)

I was asked to join a student roundtable as a guest critic in Claire Zimmerman and Michaela Rife’s course “Animal Architecture” at the University of Michigan. Students in this course from architecture and architectural history presented preliminary framings of their original research papers.

29 NOVEMBER

SEMINAR

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

I delivered a written commentary on Anna Mueser’s paper “So the Memories Fade: Writing Continuity across Rupture” for the Mellon Research Seminar on Heritage. This seminar was organized by the Wolf Humanities Center at the University of Pennsylvania.

23-28 OCTOBER

FIELDWORK

Catskill, New York

I observed, and participated in, the installation of a trio of multispecies habitat boxes at a landscape hotel in the Hudson Valley. This project was a joint effort between Joyce Hwang (University of Buffalo) and a group of first-year master’s students in Pratt Institute’s landscape architecture program.

19 OCTOBER

FIELDWORK

Brooklyn, New York

I conducted fieldwork at an exhibition of birdhouses designed by professional architects, industrial designers, and visual artists. It was titled “For the Birds.” My observations on this exhibition, along with interviews with over ten architects, will feature in my essay for Noema.

12 SEPTEMBER

WORKING GROUP

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

I organized and ran a working group for writers at the University of Pennsylvania, which hosted postdoctoral fellows from the Wolf Humanities Center, the Department of Anthropology, the Center for Latin American and Latinx Studies, and the Center for the Advanced Study of India. We met regularly throughout the academic year.

12-18 JUNE

PROGRAM

Manhattan, New York

I was accepted as a Fellow at the New School’s Institute for Critical Social Inquiry, where I took Jay Bernstein’s one-week-long seminar “Of Masters and Slaves: Reading Hegel’s Phenomenology.”