Eco-Entanglements: Ruin, Grafting, Stratification [c. 920-2020]
Graduate Conference
February 22, 2020
9:00 am - 5:30 pm
Keynote Speakers: Jean Feerick & Heide Estes
Conference Organizers: Melissa Hudasko & John Yargo
What are the ecological affordances of thinking with the medieval and early modern past? How can the environmental humanities inspire eco-mimetic modes of thinking and writing? This think-tank conference invites research-in-progress that parses logics of environmental entanglement (ruin, grafting, stratification) across pre- and early modern networks of cultural artifacts, earthy matter, and temporality of human timescales. Our conversation will open onto how medieval and early modern ecocritical scholarship is speaking directly to contemporary environmental concerns.
Follow along on Twitter: @MassRenaissance #EcoEntanglements
Shared Readings
Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome. “Anarky.” Anthropocene Reading: Literary History in Geologic Times, edited by Tobias Menely and Jesse Oak Taylor, Pennsylvania State University Press, 2017, pp. 25-42.
Ingold, Tim. “Whirl.” Veer Ecology: A Companion for Environmental Thinking, edited by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen and Lowell Duckert, University of Minnesota Press, 2017, pp. 421-433.
Conference Schedule
9:00-9:15 Opening Remarks
Marjorie Rubright, Director
9:15-9:30 Springboard Session: Stratification
Discussion of "Anarky" led by: Melissa Hudasko & John Yargo
9:30-10:30 Colloquy One: Ruin
Chair: Katherine Walker, Visiting Lecturer, Mount Holyoke College
High Tides, Low lands: Picturing Ecological Precarity, Ruin, and Land Management in 17th century Holland
Rachel Kase, Boston University
A Fluid, Ruined Future: The Potentiality of Water as Queering Power
Lisa Robinson, St. John’s University
'Wake shepherds boy, at length awake for shame': Memories of the Ravished in Spenser's
The Ruines of Time (1591)
Ty A. Smart, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Respondent: Melissa Hudasko
10:30-11 Coffee Break
11-12:30 Keynote — Heide Estes, Professor of English, Monmouth University
Gender, Disability, and Environment in Old English Poetry: Ruin, Grafting, and Stratification
12:30-1:30 Lunch
1:30-3 Keynote — Jean Feerick, Professor of English, John Carroll University
‘Renew I could not': Timon of Athens, Principles of Exchange, and Nature’s ‘conflicting elements’
3-3:15 Coffee Break
3:15-4:15 Colloquy Two: Grafting
Chair: Jane Hwang Degenhardt, Associate Professor, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Songs of the Sea: Linguistic Currents in the Early Modern Caribbean and the Anthropocene
Grayson Chong, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Agricultural Metaphors, Translation, and Literary Genealogies
in Joachim Du Bellay's Défense et illustration de la langue françoise
Marco Lobascio, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Can Pleasure Save Us?
Dina Alqassar, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Respondent: John Yargo
4:15-4:30 Coffee Break
4:30-5:00 Textual Enactments
Fugitive Explorations
Matthew Biberman, Professor, University of Louisville
Whirled Pedagogies
Melissa Hudasko
Attunement
John Yargo
5:00-5:10 Closing Remarks
Melissa Hudasko & John Yargo
5:10-5:30 Coda: Roots
Malcolm Sen, Assistant Professor, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Reception to Follow