With the “Hear, Here” series, we aim to facilitate conversations around new research in the humanities. Faculty fellows at the Institute for the Humanities will discuss a part of their current project in a short talk followed by a Q & A session.

About this talk:
To the mass standardization that has accompanied our thermo-industrialized society, we can oppose vernaculars (linguistic, architectural, economic, ritualistic, …) as forms that capacitate deceleration and autonomy through specificity and disconnection. In this talk, I explore whose agency is privileged by the efficiency of norms and standards, and who benefits from the singularity of resilient adaptations by looking at practices of care, maintenance, and repair, along with their respective modes of transmission and know-how. Most crucially, this project probes the potential of vernacular forms to regulate our ever-increasing energy consumption and dissipation in the service of social and climate well-being.

About Mireille Roddier:
Mireille Roddier is a 2023-24 Hunting Family Faculty Fellow at the Institute for the Humanities and associate professor, Architecture and Women’s & Gender Studies.