WSU Humanities Center Working Group, Reckoning with Ecological Peril and Possibility, invites faculty, students, staff, and the community to a presentation entitled, Studying the Humanities in the Climate Crisis: Some Novels and Some Pipelines, given by Caroline Levine (English, Cornell University). 

Abstract: Can the study of art and literature help us to address the accelerating climate catastrophe? This talk will argue that the most conventional ways we study the humanities may actually be supporting climate denialism and inaction. Levine will make the case for a different method of connecting literature to environmental activism, and she will show how the happy endings of the nineteenth century novel could be surprisingly useful guides for us in this moment of accelerating climate change. The talk will then use this analysis of novelistic endings to analyze pipelines, and will tell the stories of three different pipelines—one for oil, one for water, and one for racial justice—ending with a call to action. 

Please RSVP to this event.

Working Group information