Essays on Weather for a Post Katrina Society
Master's thesis in Visual and Critical Studies at School of the Art Institute of Chicago
This piece appeared in Serpentine Magazine in seven parts in fall of 2014.
Abstract:
With only the exception of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001,
Hurricane Katrina was the next deadliest event in half a century of United States
history. In the wake of Katrina and many other major meteorological events of the
past decade, our society is rethinking the infrastructural, cultural, social, political,
and historical implications of its relationship to weather. In a series of essays that
reconsiders specific weather events from history and recent times, this project
examines the problems that weather poses, not only on the regional or metropolitan
scale, but also on the personal scale. I am concerned not only how disasters test our
social fabric, but also how our engagement with weather helps to frame our
everyday experience.