Join us for another 19v seminar!
Over the last three decades ecocriticism and environmental history have evolved exciting and incisive approaches to addressing literary cultural traditions, histories of human interaction with the environment, and understandings of the links between global and local forces. At this roundtable, Nicholas Breyfogle, Jane Costlow and Thomas Hodge will discuss what it means to study the 19th century using the perspectives of these fundamentally interdisciplinary fields. What exactly is ecocriticism or environmental history? How does a focus on human-environment interactions shift one’s attention as a literary critic or historian? What sources does one turn to for an understanding of context — and just what constitutes “context” here? Are the critical terminologies used by American or European ecocritics and environmental historians appropriate to Eurasia, or do they need to be reconsidered? What are the tropes of environmental culture and politics that our study of Eurasia and Russia suggests? The speakers will provide brief introductions to a field that connects historical study with pressing contemporary questions, considering both broad conceptual issues and particular examples from their own scholarly work on European Russia and Siberia.
This event will be held virtually as a Zoom meeting.
