Air Conspiracies brings together two distinct but resonant bodies of work to examine air, atmosphere, and breath as sites of harm, power, and possibility. Sunny Xiang's current project asks how U.S. military interventions in Asia and the Pacific during the mid-twentieth century shaped the racialized and gendered perception of comfort and security on the one hand and environmental and toxicological exposure on the other. Placed into conversation with Nicholas Shapiro’s new book Homesick and his ongoing research on helicopter policing in South Los Angeles, the event traces how militarized ways of sensing the air migrate into domestic spaces, emergency housing, and everyday urban life. Together, the projects ask: What happens when the atmosphere becomes a medium of governance—whether through chemical drift, low-altitude surveillance, or the slow violence of toxic homes? And how might air inform our methods of study, styles of attention, and modes of being? Air Conspiracies invites audiences to consider how communities interpret these atmospheric pressures, how they theorize accountability and harm, and how they craft counter-knowledges.

Sponsored by Asian American Studies, the Mellon Foundation, Science and Technology Studies, Cultural Studies, Human Rights Studies, and UCLA’s project on “Deep Medicine and Care for Anomalous, Chronically Ill, and Disabled Body-Minds” part of the Abolition Medicine and Disability Justice working group.