Waves are everywhere—whether in tsunamis, radio transmissions, or stories about pandemics. But how can we understand them as both empirical and conceptual phenomena? What does wave science tell us about the ways scientists have portrayed these watery dynamics? And how do people interpret their pasts, contextualize their presents, and apprehend their futures through waves? In this BLUE Reading Seminar, we will voyage through the multifarious dimensions and ripples of waves as Stefan Helmreich’s book takes us to the worlds of oceanographers and coastal engineers in the Netherlands, the US, Australia, Japan, and Bangladesh. We will pay attention to waves not just as they are understood in marine sciences, but as they foreground the cultural, political, and cosmological worlds of folklore, surfing, music, and environmental disasters. We hope also to discuss how waves might figure in our own work—and our lives.

For this seminar, we will read:

- Stefan Helmreich (2023). A Book of Waves. Durham and London, Duke University Press.

We will be discussing the entire book, but if you do not have time, you can focus on the Introduction (1-30) and Chapter One (31-89).

This seminar is open to all. If you can join us at Moesgaard, please do! To get a Zoom link or a copy of the book, you can write to Shuhei Tashiro at shutash@cas.au.dk.