Rivers and Floods: possible interdisciplinary topics
Possible topics:
Early twentieth century African American history
The Great Migration
Civil engineering: such as the pre-1928 Army Corps of Engineers levees-only policy; dams;
FEMA; flood insurance and impact on buidling in flood plains
Climate change and future flooding events
Bushkill Creek; Delaware River and other regional floods
Environmental justice, environmental racism
Engineering ethics
Katrina, Hurricane Sandy, 2016 Louisiana flooding
Music: Delta Blues musicians responded to the flood of 1927 with an estimated 50 songs including Bessie Smith’s “Backwater Blues” (1927), Charley Patton‘s “High Water Everywhere, Part 1” (1929), Lonnie Johnson’s “Broken Levee Blues” and 1929’s “When the Levee Breaks,” by Memphis Minnie and Kansas Joe McCoy. (A song also covered by Led Zeppelin in 1971 and Dylan.)
50th anniversary of devastating the Arno River flood in Florence is November 3 & 4, 2016; “Mud Angels”
The floods and/or rivers in religious traditions; floods as cleansing; floods as destructive events; baptisms; rivers as symbols; rivers as boundries
theater productions or readings, such as Gilgamesh
Economics of sharecropper-based agriculture
Poetry, including Evie Shockley’s collaboration with Alison Saar on an artists’ book created at EPI