Associate Professor of Architecture Mireille Roddier and Taubman College undergraduate students are part of a University of Michigan humanities project examining the concept of lifespan that premiered at Taubman College’s Climate Futures exhibition.
“The Lifespan Project,” which received a U-M Humanities Collaboratory grant in 2024, weaves stories from three professors: Roddier; Bénédicte Boisseron, chair of the Department of Afroamerican and African Studies; and English Professor Megan Sweeney. Assisting were students Rowan Freeman and Nicole Tooley from Taubman College and CC Barrick and Lis Fertig from the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts (LSA). The students managed the editing, sound, image curation and production, and film editing.
The project brings together experiences from France, Ghana, and the French Caribbean islands of Martinique and Guadeloupe. The nine-minute film that premiered at the Climate Futures exhibition is the first chapter of the project and features personal stories about lifespan, grief, and waste told through the theme of water.
In her sections of the film, Roddier, who holds a joint appointment with Women’s Studies, talks about her family farmhouse in Burgundy, France, and the importation-exportation cycle of consumption and waste. She reflects on a pre-plumbing era of local energy autonomy and production, recounting that “running water didn’t reach our house until the 1950s.”
The other sections of the film, narrated by Boisseron and Sweeney, reflect the project’s theme of slowing down and breaking away from a lifestyle induced by industrialization. Boisseron discusses the use of pesticides in banana production in Martinique and Guadeloupe and the loss of her brother from such pesticides. Sweeney traveled to Ghana with Barrick to investigate the massive market for second-hand clothes sent from the United States, China, and Europe, which creates unsustainable textile waste in the country.
The faculty members began working on the Lifespan Project after Boisseron and Sweeney saw a presentation by Roddier at the U-M Institute for the Humanities. Although they work on similar issues, being in different departments and fields made it difficult to coordinate before meeting at the lecture. Recounting this experience, Roddier said the ability to share work across departments and disciplines is key to creating interdisciplinary projects like Lifespan.
Humanities Collaboratory Proposal Development Grants provide up to $60,000 to U-M teams to develop their research questions. Lifespan used the funding to hire students to assist with developing the chapter about water and pay for Sweneey’s travel to Ghana. In the future, Roddier, Boisseron, and Sweeney will use the initial first chapter of their film and written notes to apply for larger grants. The finished project is envisioned as a four-part film featuring chapters on water, earth, fire, and air with the throughline of the circulation of materials in industrial society.
