Climate-Change Technologies and the Volatilizing of American Literary Regionalism
An American Conversations Lecture
Wednesday, October 16, 2013 4:00 PM - 5:00 PM
Since their emergence at the end of the 19th century, American regional literatures have been defined by their celebration of unchanging local environments and by their resistance to modern
infrastructural technologies, which convert a grounded sense of place into an abstract sense of space. In this talk, Ray Malewitz explores the ways that climate change and climate-change
infrastructural technologies such as wind turbines, solar farms, and underground water pipelines alter these relationships in contemporary regional fiction. The presence of these technologies in
regional narratives highlights the fact that it is the possibility of a region being other than itself that enables artists and their characters to salvage a sense of what it is.
The first faculty talk in the "American Conversations" series developed by the new interdisciplinary American Studies Faculty Working Group will be by Assistant Professor Raymond Malewitz, School of
Writing, Literature, and Film, on "Climate-Change Technologies and the Volatilizing of American Literary Regionalism," on Wednesday October 16th at 4pm in Room 206 of the Memorial Union. The
introduction and moderation by Associate Professor Marisa Chappell, School of History, Philosophy, and Religion.
