UB Humanities Institute explores expanding meaning of toxicity

BUFFALO, N.Y. – Toxicity can figuratively describe personalities and workplaces as accurately as it literally represents chemical and industrial threats. Its metaphorical use is now stretched broadly over topics beyond what once was related exclusively to poisoning.

It’s that evolving meaning of toxicity that forms the basis of the University at Buffalo Humanities Institute (HI) annual conference, “These Toxic Times,” a two-day event on March 10 and 11 at various locations on the UB North Campus.

The conference is open to the public, but registration is required.

Elizabeth Mazzolini, PhD, an associate professor of English in the UB College of Arts and Sciences and the conference organizer, has had a long and abiding interest both in the environmental aspects of toxicity, including infamous local stories like Love Canal, as well as the term’s more recent applications. The idea for the conference, in fact, comes out of her own research, where she has been investigating how the word “toxic” has traveled from situations of obvious biological endangerment to its now equally impactful figurative uses.

“Noticing the range of interpretations now associated with toxicity has had me reflecting on how the idea of toxicity was about incursion and crossing borders, whether those borders were part of the body or in a community or workplace,” says Mazzolini, an expert in topics at the intersection of culture, society and the environment. “The scope of this expanding meaning rests in conditions of power. Who identifies, protects and determines when those borders are being crossed?”

Day one of the conference will feature the event’s keynote address by Alexis Shotwell, PhD, a professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Carleton University, and author of “Against Purity: Living Ethically in Compromised Times.”

Shotwell’s research in environmental humanities focuses on impurity and imperfection as a basis for action, as well as environmental justice and collective political transformation. Her book explores why contamination and compromise might be a call to action, and not a surrender, an argument where “All there is, while things perpetually fall apart, is the possibility of acting from where we are,” she writes.

“The book begins with the premise that purity, as an antidote to toxicity, is a political, ethical and environmental problem,” says Mazzolini.  “Instead of pursuing purity, she suggests investigating complications, complexity and complicity as a better way to understand the past and to pursue a more just and healthful future.”

Shotwell’s address on March 10 in the Student Union Landmark Room (210 Student Union) begins at 3:30 p.m.

John Fiege, MFA, an assistant professor of media study at UB, will host a featured event on day two. Fiege will interview UB alum Mike Schade of the environmental research and advocacy organization Toxic-Free Future. 

Schade leads their “Mind the Store” program, which challenges retailers to shift the marketplace awareness from hazardous chemicals and develop comprehensive safer polices. His work helped convince the retailer REI to stop carrying certain products manufactured with PFAS, sometimes called forever chemicals.

The on-stage interview will be presented to a live audience for Fiege’s Chrysalis podcast on March 11 at 4:30 p.m. in the Center for the Arts Screening Room (112 CFA).

“This conference is laid out to offer insights to a range of communities, including undergraduate and graduate students, academic researchers, artists and activists,” says Mazzolini. “Toxicity is such a capacious term, but it’s one that everyone recognizes. Many of those meanings are related in ways that might not be immediately identifiable, but this conference is a way to make sense of the concepts that resonate against each other.”