The Graduate Colloquium in Literature and the Environment (GCLE) gives graduate students an opportunity to present papers, workshop dissertation chapters, and discuss seminal and recent work in the field of ecocriticism. In addition, faculty from other UCSB departments and schools, as well as from outside of the University, are regularly invited to speak to the group.
Graduate Colloquium Schedule
There is little doubt that 2008-09 will be an exceptional year for the Literature and Environment Colloquium, as we will be welcoming a range of extraordinary speakers, such as Angus Fletcher, Ursula Heise, Carolyn Merchant, Elaine Scarry, Robert Watson--to name but a few. Below is a tentative schedule for the year.
Fall 2008
October 21, 2008, 4:30-6:30 p.m, South Hall 2635. Global Ecologies Colloquium:
"Street Theater and Environmental Activism"
Sharon Paltin is a practicing Family Physician in Mendocino County. She graduated from UC Berkeley in Conservation of Natural Resources and received her medical degree from St. Louis University. Dr. Paltin completed her residency in Family Practice at Community Hospital in Santa Rosa. She was a Park Ranger and Outdoor Educator, using experimental techniques in the teaching of ecology to young people. Dr. Paltin is also a member of the Giant Mutant Sponges affinity group, who continued the street theater tradition as anti-nuclear activists in the late 1970s and early 80s. She combined her medical and dramatic interests by experimenting with health education theater, traveling to Russia with Patch Adams, M.D. Paltin’s presentation will include a chance to participate in a taste of street theater, to view action photos form the archives of decades of creative collaboration, and to review some basics, themes, suggestions and useful tips for creating and manifesting your very own street theater. Street theater or activist theater includes puppetry, pageantry or parades, dance, props, costumes, sculpture, graffiti and music.
November 14, 2008, 1-4pm, McCune Room (HSSB). EMC Fall Colloquium: "Before Environmentalism Colloquium." Sponsored by the Early Modern Center.
Speaker: Robert N. Watson, Professor of English at UCLA, author of Back to Nature: The Green and the Real in the Late Renaissance (Pennsylvania UP, 2006), named the Best Book of Ecocriticism of 2005-2006 by the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment. Winner of the 2006 Elizabeth Dietz Memorial Prize for the year's best book in Renaissance and Early Modern Studies, by the editors of Studies in English Literature.
Speaker: Beth Fowkes Tobin, Professor of English at Arizona State University, author of Colonizing Nature: The Tropics in British Arts and Letters, 1760-1820 (Pennsylvania UP, 2005) and Picturing Imperial Power: Colonial Subjects in Eighteenth-Century British Painting (Duke UP, 1999).
November 18, 2008, 6-8:00 p.m. American Cultures and Global Contexts Center. Global Ecologies Colloquium: Film screening
of The End of Suburbia: Oil Depletion & the Collapse of the American Dream.
This provocative documentary, a regular on the film-festival circuit, examines the history of suburban life and the wisdom of this distinctly American way of life. A post-World War II concept, suburbia attracted droves of people, giving rise to sprawl and all that comes with it -- good and bad. How has the environment been affected by this lifestyle, and is it sustainable? Canadian director Gregory Greene dares to ask all the tough questions (Netflix.com). Since World War II North Americans have invested much of their newfound wealth in suburbia. It has promised a sense of space, affordability, family life and upward mobility. As the population of suburban sprawl has exploded in the past 50 years, so too the suburban way of life has become embedded in the American consciousness. Suburbia, and all it promises, has become the American Dream. But as we enter the 21st century, serious questions are beginning to emerge about the sustainability of this way of life. With brutal honesty and a touch of irony, The End of Suburbia explores the American Way of Life and its prospects as the planet approaches a critical era, as global demand for fossil fuels begins to outstrip supply. World Oil Peak and the inevitable decline of fossil fuels are upon us now, some scientists and policy makers argue in this documentary. The consequences of inaction in the face of this global crisis are enormous. What does Oil Peak mean for North America? As energy prices skyrocket in the coming years, how will the populations of suburbia react to the collapse of their dream? Are today's suburbs destined to become the slums of tomorrow? And what can be done NOW, individually and collectively, to avoid The End of Suburbia? (IMDB.com).
Winter 2009
January 16, 2009, 6-8:00 p.m, American Cultures and Global Contexts Center. Global Ecologies Colloquium: Film screening
of Up the Yangtze.
Professor Teresa Shewry will introduce this award winning documentary. A luxury cruise boat motors up the Yangtze - navigating the mythic waterway known in China simply as "The River." The Yangtze is about to be transformed by the biggest hydroelectric dam in history. At the river's edge - a young woman says goodbye to her family as the floodwaters rise towards their small homestead. The Three Gorges Dam - contested symbol of the Chinese economic miracle - provides the epic backdrop for Up the Yangtze, a dramatic feature documentary on life inside modern China. Chinese-Canadian filmmaker Yung Chang's beautifully photographed documentary of China's peasant life and cultural upheaval had its U.S. premiere at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival.
February 5-7, 2009. Conference: "Food Sustainability & Food Security." Sponsored by the UCSB English Department and the Interdisciplinary Center for the Humanities.
An invitational conference in February on the topic of food sustainability and food security, which will dovetail with a year-long series of food-themed events at the UCSB Humanities Center. The conference aims to bring scholars and food workers together to investigate the historical and contemporary dynamics of the global food system and to consider the future of food studies as an interdisciplinary field.
Friday, March 6, 2009. Global Ecologies Colloquium: Panel Discussion
"The Psychological Dimensions of Climate Change"
Professors Catherine Gautier and Dan Montello from the Department of Geography at UCSB will lead the panel discussion. Professor Gautier is the former Director and Principal Investigator at the Institute for Computational Earth Systems Science and head of the Earth Space Research Group. Professor Montello's research interests include: spatial, environmental and geographic perception, cognition, affect and behavior; behavioral and cognitive geography; environmental psychology and cognitive cartography
March 13, 2009, McCune Room (HSSB). EMC Winter Conference: "Before Environmentalism Conference." Sponsored by the Early Modern Center.
Speaker: Carolyn Merchant, Professor of Environmental History, Philosophy, and Ethics Environmental Science, Policy, and Management Department at UC Berkeley, author of The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology and the Scientific Revolution (1980), Ecological Revolutions: Nature, Gender, and Science in New England (1989); Radical Ecology: The Search for a Livable World (1992; 2nd ed., 2005); Earthcare: Women and the Environment (1996); The Columbia Guide to American Environmental History (2002; 2nd ed. 2007); and Reinventing Eden: The Fate of Nature in Western Culture (2003). Carolyn Merchant is one of the founders of the eco-feminism movement.
Speaker: Jill Casid is an Associate Professor of Art History, and the Director of Visual Culture Studies Program at the University of Wisconsin. She is the author of Sowing Empire: Landscape and Colonization (University of Minnesota Press, 2005) and “Inhuming Empire: Islands as Plantation Nurseries and Graves” in The Global Eighteenth Century (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003).
Spring 2009
May 1 (or 15), 2009, McCune Room (HSSB). Bliss-Zimmerman Seminar: "Before Environmentalism." Sponsored by the Bliss-Zimmerman Fund and the Early Modern Center.
Speaker: Angus Fletcher, Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the City University of New York Graduate School, author of A New Theory for American Poetry: Democracy, the Environment, and the Future of Imagination. "Angus Fletcher is a highly distinguished critic and his New Theory for American Poetry is an appropriately distinguished contribution to the new wave of literary theory that restores the imagination, the aesthetic, the emotions and the natural world to critical discourse"--Jonathan Bate. " Angus Fletcher and his work have strongly influenced the way I read poetry…His new book is the crown of his career: bold, original, brimming with imaginative energy on every page"--Harold Bloom.
May 22-23 ACGCC Conference "Beyond Environmentalism."
Speaker: Elaine Scarry, the Walter M. Cabot Professor of Aesthetics and the General Theory of Value at Harvard University, author of The Body in Pain and Dreaming by the Book, winner of the Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism.
Speaker: Ursula Heise, Associate Professor at Stanford University, Director of the Program in Modern Thought & Literature, a member of the Executive Committee of the Program in Science, Technology & Society, and of the Woods Institute for the Environment.is author of Sense of Place and Sense of Planet: The Environmental Imagination of the Global (Oxford University Press, 2008).
Spring & Winter 2008
May 9, 1:00-3:00 PM, SH 1415 "Hope, or the Futures of Environmentalism," a roundtable discussion sponsored by the American Cultures & Global Contexts Center. Featuring: Bill Freudenburg (Environmental Studies) and Lorelei Moosbrugger (Political Science).
Jan 26th, 6pm, SH 2617: Screening and discussion of Rivers and Tides, Thomas Riedelsheimer's 2001 documentary on landscape artist Andy Goldsworthy.
Mar. 6, 2008, 6 PM, SH 2635 Screening and discussion of Manufactured Landscapes, the award-winning film about Edward Burtynsky, the internationally-acclaimed photographer known for his large-scale photographs of nature transformed by industry.
Fall 2007
Oct 12th, Noon-2, SH 2635: Discussion of Chapters 4 & 5 of Lawrence Buell's recent The Future of Environmental Criticism (Harvard UP, 2005) in anticipation of Professor Buell's November 15th talk. The Powell M. Cabot Professor of American Literature at Harvard University, Lawrence Buell is one of the founders, as well as a current leader, in the field of ecocriticism. Using his book as a point of departure, we will be considering what the future holds for environmental criticism.
Nov 15th, 4-6, McCune Room, HSSB: "Environmental Memory and Planetary Survival," a lecture by Lawrence Buell. This event is cosponsored with the ACGCC. Details
Dec 7th, 10-Noon, SH 2617: “Global Warming Discourse, Politics, and Culture,” a roundtable discussion with Professors Josh Schimel (Ecology, Evolution, and Marine Biology) and Eric R.A.N. Smith (Political Science). This event is cosponsored with the ACGCC. Details
