Digaster

For the final project, students will choose a disaster – past, present, or future and real or fictional - and discuss the ‘nature’ of it in relation to the theory we have read in class. How are issues of nature and culture invoked? How are the concepts of risk and danger framed and portrayed by your source materials? Address both the unique elements of the disaster and the commonalities with disasters from other places or time periods. The final product will be an 8-10 page research paper (for graduate students, 12-18 pages), that will be developed in consultation with the instructor. A 1-2 page abstract and list of sources for the proposed project will be due by Tuesday, November 3 and counts as short assignment 2. One suggestion for finding a research topic is to read articles from the journal Disasters, available online through the Brown library, and choose an article and its bibliography as a starting point for your research. Other potentially useful journals include the Journal of Flood Risk Management, Quaternary Science Reviews; Holocene; Antiquity; Latin American Antiquity; Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology as well as edited volumes listed in the syllabus. Alternatively, you may examine disaster portrayal in film or literature, though you need to discuss the material from a theoretically informed vantage and incorporate academic sources into the analyses. You may, of course, also choose a disaster discussed in class readings and do further research on it. While the paper is not due until the final exam day and time, students will provide a 10-15 minute presentation that offers an overview of their topic in order to share their insights, thoughts, and findings with the class. Any forms of multimedia or methods that convey your material to the class are welcomed and there is no set format to the presentations.