BACKYARD THEORY
Backyard Theory is a reading group dedicated to discussing books and ideas related to contemporary cultural, environmental, and political conditions. The gatherings are intended to engage with writings on an array of issues, including media, art, and politics, anti-racism, climate change, Big Tech, public health, governance, and more.
Backyard Theory is organized by the GMTaC Lab and co-facilitated by reading group participants. Each gathering occurs either online via zoom or outdoors in a backyard, park, or other gathering grounds. Participants are expected to access readings on their own and finish them before we get together. Please come to the meetings prepared to raise questions, engage in discussion, listen carefully, and be respectful of others’ opinions. The goal is for us to be able to reflect collectively on the current moment in the world, and to formulate ideas and tactics for supporting progressive political, socio-economic, and environmental change.
Backyard Theory was initiated by Lisa Parks and Chip Stearns in Missoula, Montana during summer 2020 as a way of bringing community members together outside during the COVID-19 pandemic to discuss current US political and cultural conditions. Academics and non-academics actively participated. The list of nine books we read during the inaugural session is provided below. The reading group continues during the school year at University of California at Santa Barbara. See our reading lists and schedules below. If you are interested in starting your own Backyard Theory group, please contact Lisa Parks: parks@ucsb.edu. There may be small grants available for groups who commit to buying their books via local, independent bookstores.
If interested in participating in any Backyard Theory meetings, please email Lisa Parks at parks@ucsb.edu
Summer 2024 in Missoula, Montana
Info coming soon…
Spring 2024 at UCSB
June 11, 2024, 4-5pm, Iván Chaar López, The Cybernetic Border: Drones, Technology, and Intrusion (Duke UP, 2024). Facilitated by Tara Plath. We will meet in the GMTaC Lab office, 2132 Girvetz Hall.
May 21, 2024, 4-5pm, Edward Jones-Imhotep, The Unreliable Nation: Hostile Nature and Technological Failure in the Cold War (MIT Press, 2017). Read Introduction + chapters one, two, & six. Facilitated by Greg Siegel. We will meet in the GMTaC Lab office, 2132 Girvetz Hall.
Fall 2023 at UCSB
Dec 1, 2023, 4-5pm: Blake Atwood, Underground: The Secret Life of Videocassettes in Iran (MIT Press, 2021). Facilitated by Soha Saghazadeh. We will meet in the GMTaC Lab office, 2132 Girvetz Hall.
Summer 2023 in Missoula
Sept. 11, Vilem Flusser, Vampyroteuthis Infernalis (Univ. of Minnesota Press, 2012).
Aug. 29, Giorgio Agamben, State of Exception (Univ. of Chicago Press, 2005).
Aug. 15, Hiroko Oyamada, The Factory (New Directions, 2019). (novel)
July 13, James Bridle, Ways of Being: Animals, Plants, Machines: The Search for a Planetary Intelligence (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2022).
Winter 2023 at UCSB
Jan 27, 2023: Stefano Harney & Fred Moten, The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning & Black Study (Autonomedia, 2013). Facilitated by Jeffrey Stewart.
Fall 2022 at UCSB
Nov. 29, 2022, 12-1pm: Blake Atwood, Underground: The Secret Life of Videocassettes in Iran (MIT Press, 2021). Facilitated by Soha Saghazadeh. Canceled due to Graduate Student Strike.
Nov 4, 2022, 4-5:15pm: Nicole Starosielski, Media Hot and Cold (Duke UP, 2021). Prof Starosielski will be in person to discuss her book and other new research. Hybrid mtg: 2013 SSMS at UCSB + via zoom. Facilitated by Lisa Parks & Bhaskar Sarkar.
Summer 2022 (Missoula, MT)
Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins (Princeton University Press, 2015).
Winter 2022 at UCSB
Dylan Mulvin, Proxies: The Cultural Work of Standing In (MIT Press, 2021). Facilitated by Alenda Chang.
Kevin Floyd, The Reification of Desire: Toward a Queer Marxism (U of Minnesota Press, 2009). Facilitated by Naoki Yamamoto.
Summer 2021 Backyard Theory Reading List (Missoula, MT):
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz. Loaded: A Disarming History of the Second Amendment. City Lights Books, 2018.
Vilém Flusser, Toward a Philosophy of Photography, Reaktion Books, 2000.
Byung Chul-Han, What is Power? Polity Press, 2018.
Luce Irigaray & Michael Marder, Through Vegetal Being. Columbia University Press, 2016.
Gerald Vizenor, Native Provenance: The Betrayal of Cultural Creativity. University of Nebraska Press, 2019.
2020-21 Backyard Theory Reading List at UCSB:
Arturo Escobar. Designs for the Pluriverse. Duke University Press, 2018. Facilitated by Cristina Venegas
Jill Lepore, If Then: How the Simulatics Corporation Invented the Future. Liveright Publishing Co., 2020. Facilitated by Jennifer Holt.
Brett Neilson & Sandro Mezzadra, Border as a Method, or, the Multiplication of Labor. Duke University Press, 2013. Facilitated by Bhaskar Sarkar.
Jonathan P. Eburne, Outsider Theory: Intellectual Histories of Unorthodox Ideas. University of Minnesota Press, 2018. Facilitated by Greg Siegel.
Summer 2020 Inaugural Backyard Theory Reading List (Missoula, MT):
Timothy Snyder. On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century. Tim Duggan Books, 2017.
Slavoj Zizek. Pandemic! COVID-19 Shakes the World. Polity, 2020.
Jan Werner-Muller. What is Populism? University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016.
Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me. One World, 2015.
Bruno Latour, Down to Earth: Politics in the New Climatic Regime. Polity, 2018.
Philip Howard. Lie Machines: How to Save Democracy from Troll Armies, Deceitful Robots, Junk News Operations, and Political Operatives. Yale University Press, 2020.
Judith Butler. The Force of Non-Violence: An Ethico-Political Bind. Verso, 2020.
Byung-Chul Han. The Burnout Society. Stanford Briefs, 2015.
Renata Salecl. A Passion for Ignorance: What We Choose Not to Know and Why. Princeton University Press, 2020.