Faculty Research Fellow
Shiho Satsuka (Ph.D. 2004, University of California-Santa Cruz) researches the politics of knowledge, environment, science and capitalism. She is the author of Nature in Translation: Japanese Tourism Encounters the Canadian Rockies (Duke University Press, 2015) and coeditor of The World Multiple: The Quotidian Politics of Knowing and Generating Entangled Worlds (Routledge, 2019). As a member of the Matsutake Worlds Research Group she has been following the global scientific and commercial networks of matsutake mushrooms funded by SSHRC Insight Grant.
Fellowship Research Project: Undoing the 20th Century with Mushrooms: Toward New Forms of Environmental Ethics
This project traces the activities of scientists and citizens who engage with matsutake mushrooms in Japan. It explores how this charismatic fungus inspired people to develop new social imaginations and environmental ethics. How do their engagements with matsutake develop critical reflections on the history of the twentieth century, especially, the industrialization and the colonial legacies in Japan and beyond? How does the matsutake guide people to develop new forms of environmental ethics in post-industrial society? This project contributes to environmental humanities by exploring the new direction of environmental movements, more-than-human ethics and knowledge production in the so-called Anthropocene.