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About the Event from the Organizers

We’re delighted to announce the 2024 version of the now-annual Environmental Humanities colloquium “Hope & Uncertainty: How We Talk about Ecological Catastrophe,” running on the afternoon of September 19, 2024.

This year’s colloquium features an international community of scholars working at the intersection of literary studies, science, and environmental humanisms for an urgent shared project: developing effective methods for communicating about ecological and climate crisis in ways that think beyond catastrophic doom narratives. (See schedule and abstracts, below, and poster, below and attached.)

Please join us for a keynote, several short talks and plenty of time for discussion and making connections across fields at and beyond the University of Toronto. Light refreshments will be provided—please bring your own container, utensils, and mug to help minimize waste!

To attend any or all of the events (including hybrid attendance options for Prof. Maurer’s keynote address and/or Panel 1), please complete this brief form: .

Contacts

Email us at daniel.newman@utoronto.ca and/or ja.boyd@mail.utoronto.ca with any questions.

Agenda

12:00-2:00. Keynote Address (in person, with hybrid option)

“The Ocean on Fire: Pacific Stories from Nuclear Survivors and Climate Activists,” by Professor Anaïs Maurer (French & Comparative Literature, Rutgers University)

2:30-3:30. Panel 1. Pacific Nuclear Ecologies (in person, with hybrid option)

“Co-Conjuration: Practicing Decolonial Nuclear Criticism,” by Professor Lisa Yoneyama (East Asian Studies and Women & Gender Studies, UTSG)

“Writing the Nuclear Free Pacific in Fiji,” by Professor Rebecca Hogue (English, UTSG)

“Wood and Water,” by Professor Melissa Gniadek (English & Drama, UTM)

4:00-6:00. Panel 2. Narrative & Ecology (in person). Five 10-minute talks, followed by an hour of discussion and Q&A

“Entangled Extractions and Textured Landscapes in Surire (2015),” by Isidora Cortés-Monroy Gazitúa (Spanish & Portuguese, UTSG)

“Internal Ecologies: Gut Health in Medicine and Popular Fiction, 1870s-1930s,” by Dr Louise Benson James (English, Ghent University)

“Serious, Hopeful, Boring: Storying Climate Justice in Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future,” by Dr Ciarán Kavanagh (English, Ghent University)

“Fluid Forms: Reading Waters in Rita Wong’s undercurrent,” by Marina Klimenko (English, UTSG)

“Of mice and mirrors: Affective ecologies in Yaa Gyasi’s Transcendent Kingdom (2020),” by Dr Shannon Lambert (English, Ghent University)

After the colloquium, those who are interested can gather for a drink and more conversation at the 

“Hope & Uncertainty” was made possible thanks to generous financial, logistical and promotional support from the Departments of English (UTSG) and English & Drama (UTM), the School of the Environment, the Jackman Humanities Institute, and the Environmental Humanities International Doctoral Cluster (EH-IDC).