The Penn State Department of Geography will host Pavithra Vasudevan for a talk titled "Rewriting Capitalism's Horror Story" at 3:30 p.m. on Friday, Feb. 6, in 112 Walker Building on the University Park campus. The talk will also be accessible via Zoom.
Vasudevan is a geographer, poet and performing artist who serves as an assistant professor of assistant professor of African and African Diaspora studies and women's, gender and sexuality studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research examines how racialized peoples and landscapes are devalued in capitalism and explores the possibilities of collective struggle to imagine more just and sustainable futures.
Her talk draws from her book "A Toxic Alchemy: Race and Waste in Industrial Capitalism," which uses storytelling and speculative fiction to challenge dominant narratives of industrialization. She will share a dystopian short story featured in the book's final chapter, in which a Black community in the U.S. South discovers that a multinational corporation plans to build an eco-friendly waterpark over polluted land they have spent decades fighting to have remediated.
Vasudevan's work has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the Society for Women Geographers, the American Association of University Women and the American Council of Learned Societies.
Her lecture is part of the spring 2026 Coffee Hour seminar series hosted by Penn State's Department of Geography. To learn more and access Zoom information, visit the Coffee Hour event webpage.
