This past spring, a Ph.D. seminar entitled “Theorizing Infrastructure” was offered in Florida Atlantic University’s graduate program in comparative studies. The curriculum included a capstone assignment for which students redesigned shared-use infrastructure in South Florida.
The course was taught by Stacey Balkan, an associate professor of environmental humanities who is the founder and program coordinator for FAU’s undergraduate minor in environment and society and graduate certificate in environmental studies in the College of Arts and Letters. Balkan describes the ideas behind the course in the essay below, followed by pieces written by students in the course in which they envision an inhabitable future for an environmentally vulnerable South Florida.
- “Reimagining sustainability: FAU students redesign South Florida’s infrastructure” by Stacey Balkan
- “Listening to the land: A vision for climate-responsive living in South Florida” by Maryam Badiei
- “A timeless creature saves Marco Island” by Alex Banks
- “Crossing Acuosa: The story of the waters once called Florida” by Alexander D. Veal
- “Reimagining Liberty City: From concrete grid to sponge neighborhood” by Olawale Oladokun
- “Welcome to Kitty City: A Lake Worth Beach cat colony” by Alicia Sowisdral
- “The Ah-Tah-Thi-Ki Structure: Reimagining infrastructure through Indigenous knowledge” by Hassan Pishahang
Sign up for The Invading Sea newsletter by visiting here. To support The Invading Sea, click here to make a donation. If you are interested in submitting an opinion piece to The Invading Sea, email Editor Nathan Crabbe at ncrabbe@fau.edu. Banner photo: A conceptual image of a South Florida “eco-community” created for one of the essays, using ChatGPT’s image generation tools.
