Come join us on Friday February 24th at 5:30 PM in Rome Hall 771 (801 22nd St. NW).
Our presenters cut across time periods and disciplines. Each will give a short paper, with a general Q&A to follow. Speakers include:
Stacy Alaimo is Professor of English at the University of Texas at Arlington, where she has won several teaching awards and has served as co-chair of the University's Sustainability Committee. Her primary interests are the environmental humanities, animal studies, posthumanism, science studies, new materialism, gender theory, cultural studies, and multicultural American literatures. She has published two books recently: Material Feminisms (edited with Susan J. Hekman, 2008) and Bodily Natures: Science, Environment, and the Material Self (2010). A book entitled Sea Creatures and the Limits of Animal Studies: Science, Aesthetics, Ethics is currently in the works. Please see her research page for more information.
Lowell Duckert is a doctoral candidate in the GW English program, finishing his dissertation on early modern waterscapes, actor-network theory, and ecocriticism. He has forthcoming articles on glaciers, the color maroon, rain, and Walter Ralegh's Discoverie of Guiana. Along with Jeffrey Cohen, he is editing a special issue of the journal postmedieval titled "Ecomateriality."
Jennifer James, Associate Professor of English and Director of African Studies Program at GW, specializes in African American literature and culture, with a concentration in the 19th century. She has a particular interest in theorizing the relationships among literary praxis, representations of blackness, and sociopolitical violence. She is working on two projects: Black Jack: Andrew Jackson and African American Cultural Memory, which traces the history three generations of ancestors enslaved by the President, and a cultural history of a little-known labor riot staged by black American miners during the “nadir.” A short list of her scholarship includes: “What Guano is Made of: Race, Labor and Sustainability ” (forthcoming, special topic issue of American Literary History on sustainability and American literature) and “Ecomelancholia: Slavery, War, and Black Ecological Imaginings” in Environmental Criticism for the 21st Century (eds. Stephanie LeMenager, et. al., 2011).
Eileen Joy is Associate Professor of English at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. Her main interests are Old English literature, cultural studies, embodied affectivities, ethics, and the post/human. She has published on many topics: Beowulf, suicide terrorism, and Emmanuel Levinas; historical artifacts and cultural memory; the Anglo-Latin Wonders of the East and the 2002 massacre of Muslims in Gujarat, India; the intellectual history of early modern bibliography; and much more. She is the co-editor of The Postmodern Beowulf: A Critical Casebook (2007), Cultural Studies of the Modern Middle Ages (2007), and postmedieval: a journal of medieval cultural studies. Her current research/writing project is on the Anglo-Latin and Old English Lives of Saint Guthlac and the queer erotics of unsettled inter-subjectivities, along with a monograph tentatively titled Postcard from the Volcano: Beowulf, Memory, History. You can also find her blogging on In the Middle and organizing future events for the BABEL Working Group.
