The Leslie Center for the Humanities Institute “Affective Currents: Moving the Environmental Humanities” focuses attention on environmental humanities research and practices that foster affective responses to environmental concerns, with the goal to “move the world,” rather than just “think the world.” The institute is organized around the fluid themes of air and water currents, particularly as they intersect with the emotional themes of precarity and imaginative capacities—what we are calling “undercurrents”. A focus on symbolic and material currents, undercurrents, tides, and streams acknowledges the complex meshing of human and nonhuman subjects that is at the core of any eco-cultural inquiry, their constant entanglement and restlessness in an age of socio-environmental distress. One of the goals of the Institute is also to rethink our academic practices in ways that engage the affective registers of environmental change, with a focus on interdisciplinary collaborative writing and creative work. Starting on April 3rd, and lasting until May 31st, the Institute will meet every Monday, from 1:00 to 2:00 pm, in 101 Dartmouth Hall, and will consist of either a group discussion on a reading or a guest lecture. The Institute will culminate in a one-day symposium on Monday, May 22nd. If you are interested in participating in one or more of the weekly meetings, please contact us (matteo.gilebbi@dartmouth.edu).
Laura Ogden, Damiano Benvegnù, and Matteo Gilebbi (Institute Co-directors)
Martina Broner, Alysia Garrison, Maron Greenleaf, and Zenovia Toloudi (Institute Core Members)
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Schedule
- April 3: Introductions & Goals
- April 10: Trends & New Directions. Guest: URSULA MÜNSTER (Associate Professor and Director of the Oslo School of Environmental Humanities)
- April 17: Trends & New Directions. Guest: DOLLY JØRGENSEN (Professor of History at University of Stavanger and co-editor in chief of “Environmental Humanities”)
- April 24: Writing to Feel the World. Guest: KATHLEEN STEWART (Professor Emeritus at University of Texas-Austin)
- May 1: Writing to Feel the World. Guest: HUGH RAFFLES (Professor and Chair of Anthropology at The New School for Social Research)
- May 8: Interdisciplinary Practices. Guest: BERNIE KRAUSE (Musician and soundscape ecologist, founder of “Wild Sanctuary” soundscape archive)
- May 15: Interdisciplinary Practices. Guest: TOM HEGEN (Photographer working on anthropogenic transformations of the environment)
- May 21: Screening of the film “Atlantide” by Yuri Ancarani (4:00pm at the HOP)
- May 22: Affective Currents SYMPOSIUM (2:00-6:00 pm, Dartmouth Hall 105). Keynote speaker: SHAUL BASSI (Full Professor and member of the Center for Environmental Humanities at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice)
- May 31 (Wed): Synthesis – Group Discussion