A panel of four noted scholars who are drawing on and contributing to the environmental humanities will come together on Feb. 16 for a discussion co-hosted by the Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities and the Center for Latin American, Caribbean and Latinx Studies.
The four speakers are: Macarena Gómez-Barris, professor and chair of social science and cultural studies at Pratt Institute; Gisela Heffes, professor of modern and classical literatures and cultures, Rice University; Kristina Lyons, assistant professor of anthropology, University of Pennsylvania; and Victoria Saramago, assistant professor of Romance languages and literatures, University of Chicago. Carlos Alonso Nugent, assistant professor of English, will moderate the online discussion, which begins at noon (Central time).
Sign up for the discussion on Zoom.
The scholars, engaging variously with Latinx peoples in the United States, with Black and Indigenous peoples in Latin America and the Caribbean, and with migrants moving beneath and beyond these geographies, have raised these questions:
How and why have the Americas been at the center of the geological epoch that has been called the Anthropocene, the Capitalocene, and related names? How and why have the Americas played pivotal roles in settler colonialism, racial capitalism and other planet-altering processes?
Conversely, how and why might the Americas—particularly the Black and Indigenous Americas—offer us different ways of depicting and dwelling on our planet? How and why might the inhabitants of these continents teach us to remain resilient amidst prolonged droughts, sudden disasters and the rest of our ever-changing environments?
For more information, email Terry Tripp at terry.tripp@vanderbilt.edu.