Keywords: Waste Studies - Impurity - Entanglement
Affiliation: Washington State University
Lisa’s research foregrounds the material entanglement human and the more-than-human worlds drawing on theoretical frameworks from an array of different fields such as the environmental humanities, waste studies, and monster theory among others. Central concepts that she thinks with and through are waste, impurity, and contamination. She is currently working on two distinct projects. The first is a close examination of Katharina Köller’s novel Was ich im Wasser sah with a focus on impure and monstrous being. Telling the story of visceral experiences of material entanglement and contamination, Köller’s text asks us to rethink impurity and monstrosity not as a dangerous outside but as pervasive qualities of life that are always already seeping through our bodily borders and transforming us from the inside. In her other project, she analyzes artworks by artists such as Friedensreich Hundertwasser, Julian Charrière, Hito Steyerl, and Jaydra Johnson. Through these analyses, she aims to draw attention to the problematic ways in which we attempt to extricate ourselves from our own waste rather than contend and engage with the many things we deem disposable and disgusting. Our relationship with waste is one of separation, obscurity, and ignorance. However, our waste also holds potential for creativity, innovation, and new creations if we dare to sense and grasp rather than sanitize and discard. Lisa is currently a co-coordinator of the Environmental Studies Network at the German Studies Association.