How has the Mississippi River region been documented, analyzed, and described thus far, and how have these practices set the stage for further research?

The Anthropocene is global and planetary. During the St. Louis Anthropocene Field Campus (March 8–10, 2019), it was explored locally and on the level of the everyday.

Participants in the St. Louis Anthropocene Field Campus learned about St. Louis as a vital site of the Anthropocene and were introduced to novel tactics for engaging the Anthropocene in different settings around the world. Further, the St. Louis Anthropocene Field Campus experimented with strategies for drawing out the many scales (nano to macro) and types of systems (ecological, social, cultural, political, economic, technological, and atmospheric) that produce what social theorists Eli Elioff and Tyson Vaughn have termed “quotidian anthropocenes.”

The Mississippi River region is also populated by creative communities and educational, research, and arts institutions that have mapped, visualized, and planned for the future of the region in impressive ways. Together, with participants of St. Louis Anthropocene Field Campus they drew out comparisons with other sites, asking questions that require interdisciplinary collaboration: How has the Mississippi Region been documented, analyzed, and described thus far, and how have these practices set the stage for further work today? How can “the Anthropocene” – and particularly local, quotidian anthropocenes – be usefully measured, narrated, and visualized? What kinds of civic institutions are needed to develop, share, and archive Anthropocene research in different places?