"Affective Currents: Moving the Environmental Humanities"
The Leslie Center for the Humanities announces the Humanities Institute "Affective Currents: Moving the Environmental Humanities", which will take place throughout Spring term 2023.
The Institute 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. The Institute is co-directed by Laura Ogden, Damiano Benvegnù, and Matteo Gilebbi. Institute Core Members are Martina Broner, Alysia Garrison, Maron Greenleaf, and Zenovia Toloudi.
Starting on April 3, and lasting until May 31, the Institute will meet weekly for either a group discussion on a reading or a guest lecture. The Institute will culminate in a one-day symposium on Monday, May 22 and a final discussion on May 31.
Please contact Matteo Gilebbi matteo.gilebbi@dartmouth.edu if you are interested in participating in any of the sessions, all of which will be hybrid Zoom and in-person events.