Talk: "American Literature Before, Through, and After The Climate Emergency"

In association with the gallery exhibition, Points of Return, and in partnership with The Thoreau Society, Professor Joseph Donica traces our naturalist and ecological thinking through a few hundred years of American history and literature. From early Indigenous creation narratives to the naturalism of the 19th-century Concord writers to the contemporary climate fiction genre and the emerging thought around climate justice and queer ecologies, Donica takes us on a wild, strange trip through how American literature has consistently centered our fundamental humanity in the natural world—just as the artists in Points of Return do today.

 

Dr. Joseph Donica teaches American literature, literary criticism and theory, and writing courses at the City University of New York's Bronx Community College. He writes about American literature and collective memory and how we use that memory to move us through collective crises such as Hurricane Katrina. He is writing a scholarly trilogy titled The Ends of Neoliberalism. Book one is titled Inequality's Subjects: American Literature after the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street. He is also completing a fantasy series titled The Secret History of Unicorns in the Bronx. And as a union activist, he devotes much of his work to returning the City University of New York to its founding vision as free for all NYC residents.

 

NOTE: A Guided Tour of the Exhibition will be offered immediately preceeding the talk, starting Saturday, May 13, 3pm. Both events are free, but RSVP is REQUIRED.