Emerson College Library: Teach-In on Sustainability Fall 2024: Environment & Sustainability Writer's Panel: Create/Communicate/Convince

Environment & Sustainability Writer's Panel: Create/Communicate/Convince

Friday, November 22, 2:00 pm-3:00 pm EST

Presenters:

Christine Casson, Assistant Professor, Writing, Literature & Publishing
Sarah Cole, Assistant Professor, Writing, Literature & Publishing
Jennah Figueroa, MFA Candidate, Creative Writing
Steven Himmer, Senior Lecturer II, Writing, Literature & Publishing
Hannah Nuce, MFA Candidate, Creative Writing
Holly Walker, MFA Candidate, Creative Writing
Vivian Walman-Randall, MFA Candidate, Creative Writing

Description:

Writers address the importance and the challenges of writing fiction, non-fiction, poetry, etc. that take as their subject climate, environmental, and other sustainable issues.

Location

Little Building, Room 241
80 Boylston St, Boston, MA 02116

Sustainable Development Goal

Sustainable Development Goal 4: Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all

Sustainable Development Goal 4: Quality Education

The United Nations explains the purpose of this goal, stating "Providing quality education for all is fundamental to creating a peaceful and prosperous world. Education gives people the knowledge and skills they need to stay healthy, get jobs and foster tolerance. It is estimated that 147 million children missed more than half of their in-class instruction over the past two years. This generation of children could lose a combined total of $17 trillion in lifetime earnings in present value."

Fiction at Emerson

Almanac of the Dead by Leslie Marmon Silko
In its extraordinary range of character and culture, Almanac of the Dead is fiction on the grand scale, a brilliant, haunting, and tragic novel of ruin and resistance in the Americas. Through the violent lives of Lecha's extended familiy, a many-layered narrative unfolds to tell the magnificent, tragic, and unforgettable story of the struggle of native peoples in the Americas to keep, at all costs, the core of their culture: their way of seeing, their way of believing, their way of being.
The Dazzle of Day by Molly Gloss
The Dazzle of Day is a brilliant and widely celebrated mixture of mainstream literary fiction and hard SF. Molly Gloss turns her attention to the frontiers of the future, when the people of our over-polluted planet Earth voyage out to the stars to settle new worlds, to survive unknown and unpredictable hardships, and to make new human homes. Specifically, it is a story about people who have grown up on a ship that is traveling to a new world, and about the society and culture that have evolved among them by the time they arrive at their new home planet.
The Dirty Side of the Storm by Martha Serpas
In poems that bear witness to the eroding bayou country and its Cajun culture, Martha Serpas venerates a vanishing landscape defined by watersensuous, fecund, and destructive. As marsh turns into gulf, identity and consciousness are transformed as well. Serpas's verses invest paradox with her own defiantly spiritual meaning.
Mean Spirit by Linda Hogan
Mean Spirit tells the story of a government official who learned to honor his Native American heritage and fall in love with its people through the investigation of Grace Banket: a young woman who was once the richest person in her territory, until the greed of white men led to her murder and a future of uncertainty for her family. What the official found has been documented by history: rampant fraud, intimidation, and murder. But he also found something truly extraordinary--his deepest self and abiding love for his people, and their brave past.
Scratch by Steve Himmer
After an aimless life, Martin Blaskett is ready to settle down, unaware of the tension rising in his new town from unknowable forces. When he draws the attention of a shape-shifter from local legend, his world is shaken, and he is led across the hazy border of the feral wilderness with a tempestuous history.
Tracks by Louise Erdrich
Set in North Dakota at a time in this century when Indian tribes were struggling to keep what little remained of their lands, Tracks is a tale of passion and deep unrest. Over the course of ten crucial years, as tribal land and trust between people erode ceaselessly, men and women are pushed to the brink of their endurance—yet their pride and humor prohibit surrender.

Non-Fiction at Emerson

All We Can Save
Two powerful phenomena are simultaneously unfolding on Earth: the rise of the climate movement and the rise of women and girls. The People's Climate March and the Women's March. School strikes for climate and the #MeToo movement. Rebellions against extinction and declarations that time's up. More than concurrent, the two trends are deeply connected. From sinking islands to drought-ridden savannas, the global warming crisis places an outsized burden on women, largely because of gender inequalities.
The Great Derangement by Amitav Ghosh
"Are we deranged? The acclaimed Indian novelist Amitav Ghosh argues that future generations may well think so. How else to explain our imaginative failure in the face of global warming? In his first major book of nonfiction since In an Antique Land, Ghosh examines our inability--at the level of literature, history, and politics--to grasp the scale and violence of climate change. The climate crisis asks us to imagine other forms of human existence-a task to which fiction, Ghosh argues, is the best suited of all cultural forms. His book serves as a great writer's summons to confront the most urgent task of our time.

An Inconvenient Truth
Former Vice President Al Gore explains the facts of global warming, presents arguments that the dangers of global warning have reached the level of crisis, and addresses the efforts of certain interests to discredit the anti-global warming cause. Between lecture segments, Gore discusses his personal commitment to the environment, sharing anecdotes from his experiences.

Surviving the Century by Herbert Girardet (Editor)
Powerful action is required now to turn a deepening global crisis into an unprecedented opportunity for positive change. This book shows how a dramatic transformation of how humans relate to the Earth, and to one another, can be achieved. Surviving the Century is a must-have primer and action plan for all leaders in government, business and NGOs, and for all who want to be part of the historic opportunity to provide solutions to the greatest challenge humanity has ever faced.
The Weather Makers by Tim Flannery
Sometime this century the day will arrive when the human influence on the climate will overwhelm all other natural factors. The Weather Makers is both an urgent warning and a call to arms, outlining the history of climate change, how it will unfold over the next century, and what we can do to prevent a cataclysmic future. Along with a riveting history of climate change, Tim Flannery offers specific suggestions for action for both lawmakers and individuals, from investing in renewable power sources like wind, solar, and geothermal energy, to offering an action plan with steps each and every one of us can take right now to reduce deadly CO2 emissions by as much as 70 percent.

Resources Beyond Emerson

Don't worry, spiders
This haiku by Kobayashi Issa reflects the common haiku form of 5-7-5 structure and nature-based imagery. It conveys a sense of domesticity and acceptance of the natural world.
What the Warming World Needs Now is Art, Sweet Art
An article in the nonprofit media organization Grist by American environmentalist and writer Bill McKibben about how art can be used to express the impact of climate change for future generations