Global Ecologies: Nature / Narrative / Neoliberalism - A two-day conference

Canadian Studies at the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability co-sponsored and contributed funding to this conference, co-organized by UCLA and Canadian University faculty.

RSVP: http://globalecologies.eventbrite.com

This conference will foreground international environmental issues and highlight the importance of how attention to narrative form is vital to understanding and enhancing the impact on public understandings of environmental crisis. We bring together scholars at UCLA and beyond who are concerned with how narrative forms such as the novel, non-fiction prose, poetry, (digital) media, the arts, as well as the narrative practices of scientists, social scientists and ecologists have differently inflected the representation of non-human nature, and to raise questions about the challenges environmental storytelling poses for collaboration between the global North and the global South.

This two-day conference brings together scholars examining globalization and the environment in order to address the interdisciplinary implications of environmental study. Working in diverse fields such as African, Caribbean, Latin American, South Asian, and Pacific Island Studies, our participants will examine issues in environmental studies across a number of geographical and national contexts; those who have engaged critical questions about the role narrative can play in illuminating the links between the environmental concerns and the history of colonialism and globalization. Joan Martinez-Alier’s concept of the “environmentalism of the poor,” and Vandana Shiva’s model of “earth democracy” are central concepts animating the work of our proposed participants.

To view the full event schedule click here.

DATES: Friday/Saturday, March 8 and 9th

KEYNOTE: Dr. Vandana Shiva

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Separate ticket required for Dr. Vandana Shiva's keynote address, which takes place at 7 pm on March 8th in Broad 2160E.

ORGANIZED BY: Elizabeth DeLoughrey, Department of English at UCLA; Jill Didur, Concordia University, Canada; and Anthony Carrigan, English, University of Keele, UK

COSPONSORS: University of California Humanities Research Initiative (UCHRI), UCLA Center for the Study of Women, UCLA's Institute for the Environment and Sustainability, and the Canadian Studies Program with additional generous support from the UCLA Division of the Humanities, UCLA Division of the Social Sciences, and the UCLA Department of English.

Published: Wednesday, February 27, 2013