Related: The Future of the Humanities Project
Over the course of the 2022-2023 academic year, the Future of the Humanities Project sponsored a series of lectures on literature, art, and the environment in collaboration with Campion Hall, Oxford, and Blackfriars Hall, Oxford.
In this series, we heard from eminent speakers about the way that art and literature have through the ages foregrounded the inspirational beauty, delicacy, and strength of the natural world of which we are a part. We also asked how art and literature can intervene in a world dominated by environmental desecration. Can art and literature suggest new ways of relating to the natural world? Is it possible, as Freya Mathews asks, for us to “sing the world” and thus to develop poetic and artistic rapport with the earth in its "inner dimensions"? In the first online events of the series taking place this fall, our speakers examined examples from literature, theatre, visual arts, and photography. The hour-long virtual events included a Q&A with the audience.
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Marilynne Robinson's first novel, Housekeeping (1980), treats generations of Foster women tending the family home in fictitious Fingerbone, Idaho. They contend with regular lunar floods, a lake that…
Following the climactic gunfight in the saloon at the end of the classic Western film Shane (1953), Shane tells Little Joe he’s “gotta be goin’ on.” In the final scene, Shane rides alone into the…
The natural environment has been a central concern of English literature from the earliest times. It is often overlooked that the English literary tradition, renowned for Chaucer, Shakespeare, and…
Operating in the tradition of the atlases developed by activist scholars, A People’s Atlas of Nuclear Colorado is a collectively authored digital project documenting and interpreting the sites…
Phoebe Anna Traquair (1852-1936) was one of the leading contributors to the British arts and crafts movement, and she was one of the first three women elected to the Royal Scottish Academy. Born in…
In this talk, Tali Chilson discussed how Jewish writers from London’s East End reconstructed a slum that was home to a community of working-class immigrants living in abject poverty. She considered…
