{"id":20111,"date":"2020-07-03T23:36:42","date_gmt":"2020-07-04T06:36:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/live-ehc-english-ucsb-edu-v01.pantheonsite.io\/?page_id=20111"},"modified":"2020-07-12T15:12:01","modified_gmt":"2020-07-12T22:12:01","slug":"humanities-on-the-brink-abstracts-and-bios","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/ehc.english.ucsb.edu\/?page_id=20111","title":{"rendered":"HOTB Abstracts & Bios A-D"},"content":{"rendered":"
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HUMANITIES ON THE BRINK: ENERGY, ENVIRONMENT, EMERGENCY<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

AN ASLE-SPONSORED, NEARLY CARBON-NEUTRAL CONFERENCE<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>\n

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ABSTRACTS & BIOS (A-D)<\/span><\/p>\n

E-K<\/a> | L-R<\/a> | S-Z<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>\n

[easy-share buttons=”facebook,twitter,linkedin,mail” counters=0 native=”no” image=https:\/\/live-ehc-english-ucsb-edu-v01.pantheonsite.io\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/01D_UCEN_010-3-2.jpg url=https:\/\/live-ehc-english-ucsb-edu-v01.pantheonsite.io\/?page_id=3823 facebook_text=Share twitter_text=Tweet\u00a0linkedin_text=Link text=”Check out all the speakers\u00a0at ASLE’s nearly carbon-neutral conference: “Humanities on the Brink: Energy, Environment, Emergency”]<\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>\n

<\/a>Every Town Our Hometown\/Every Man a Kinsman<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

K. Abilasha<\/span><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Tribes of India are a community that undergoes double oppression first by the colonial\u00a0masters and then by the government that follows the same forest laws framed by the British. This\u00a0law denies the rights of these tribes over the forest and makes them homeless. Most of these\u00a0tribes are hunter gatherers who move around a lot and co exist with nature. The tribal community\u00a0in India includes hundreds of different groups spread widely across the subcontinent and its\u00a0islands. Of all the tribes, the tribes of Andaman are unique as they are black like Africans. They\u00a0are Negritos. I propose to study the effect of colonialism on these tribes and their settlements by\u00a0studying Deepak Dalal\u2019s Andaman Adventure The Jarawa and Andaman Adventure Barren\u00a0Island. These two adventure stories give elaborate details about the endangered species like\u00a0edible nest swiftlet, sea cucumber and crocodiles. The Jarawa are one of the three tribes that\u00a0survived colonial encroachment and are in the verge of extinction due to settler domination and\u00a0insensate policies like construction of Andaman trunk road that runs through the heart of the\u00a0Jarawa territory by the state to promote tourism. The British had changed many of the dense\u00a0tropical forests of India to golf grounds, tea estates, coffee estates and eucalyptus forests which\u00a0became detrimental to the ecosystem. The Andaman archipelago is not an exception to this plight\u00a0but it lost many tribes too. The present pandemic also poses a threat to vulnerable poor who may\u00a0have developed immunity to viruses but not to hunger. Hence it is the time for self introspection\u00a0to revise our policies and develop a responsible humane attitude like the protagonists of the\u00a0select stories.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

K. Abilasha is an\u00a0Assistant Professor of Sri S Ramasamy Naidu Memorial College, Sattur, India.<\/span><\/span><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>\n

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<\/a>Teaching Environmental Ethics F\u00fcnf Freunde<\/em> [Five Friends<\/em>] (2012) and Five on Kirrin Island Again<\/em> (1947)<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Fazila Derya Agis<\/i><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

In this study, the German movie titled \u201cF\u00fcnf Freunde\u201d [Five Friends] (2012) and the British novel \u201cFive on\u00a0Kirrin Island Again\u201d (1947) by Enid Blyton that inspired the movie will be compared in relation to\u00a0technological changes over the course of time for the protection of the environment against climate\u00a0change in terms of environmental ethics. Accordingly, (a) replacing \u201ccoal, coke and oil\u201d (Blyton, 1947)\u00a0with water or any other energy providers, (b) dog behavior for environmental protection, (c) bird\u00a0migrations, and (d) the concept of nature as a shelter for psychological relief and against dangers will be<\/span>\u00a0analyzed eco-ethically in terms of how they are explained in two different locations and time periods,\u00a0since the movie depicts a German town in 2012, whereas the novel a British town in 1947. Therefore,\u00a0the unethical behavior of corrupt people trying to steal an eco-friendly research project, the ethical\u00a0boundaries of the research on the use of a simple alternative energy resource instead of petroleum,\u00a0coke, and coal, and humans\u2019 behavior towards dogs and birds as animals as well as towards pure nature\u00a0will be discussed together with the dire effects of climate change that may occur without ethical\u00a0preventive measures. As a result, an environmental ethical literature education theory will be\u00a0constructed by analyzing the importance of the use of alternative cheap and eco-friendly energies\u00a0instead of petroleum, coke, and coal from a historical point of view. Thus, as opposed to the science and\u00a0technology depicted as tools used by humans to destroy the earth by White (1967), eco-ethical science\u00a0and technology can be the tools used to develop methods and systems to protect the environment and<\/span>\u00a0various species according to Blyton (1947). This study will show that Leopold wrote A Sand County\u00a0Almanac (1949) for suggesting a \u201cland ethic,\u201d but Blyton (1947) referred to land and nature ethics two\u00a0years before him and her ethical views are still valid in the 2000s for the protection of the whole earth\u00a0and species, just like those of Holmes Rolston III (1975) who regarded the protection of species as a\u00a0moral mission and of Stone (1972) who argued that natural objects should have had the same legal\u00a0rights as those of the corporations. This study questions the differences and similarities between the\u00a0eco-ethical views of Blyton (1947) and Leopold (1949), and their application and representation in a\u00a0German movie, titled \u201cF\u00fcnf Freunde\u201d [Five Friends] (2012).<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

I earned my Ph.D. at Ankara University in Italian Language and Literature, having defended my\u00a0dissertation on the letters of Amerigo Vespucci from an ecocritical perspective. I earned my M.S. degree\u00a0in Social Anthropology from Middle East Technical University, my M.A. degree in English Linguistics from\u00a0Hacettepe University, and my B.A. in Italian Language and Literature from Ankara University. I have\u00a0taught courses in Translation Studies at Girne American University, and I have been teaching online\u00a0World Literature and Composition courses for the University of People. I worked also as a visiting scholar\u00a0in Brandeis University\u2019s Hadassah-Brandeis Institute.<\/span><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>\n

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<\/a>Reading South Asian Ecofiction as Counternarratives to Climate Denialism <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Muhammad Manzur Alam<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

In this presentation, I use Anglophone South Asian ecofiction as a point of reference to discuss how literary texts can address global emergencies. Claiming that our indifference towards climate and other emergencies is part of our alienation and mechanization of emotion imposed by the advanced, capitalist order of the world, this presentation demonstrates that literary texts\u2019 ability to incorporate interdisciplinary angles and cathartic measures can generate a counternarrative of awareness. Extractive neoliberal capitalism largely sustains by orchestrating industrial disasters and environmental pillages, followed by the narratives of denial that the perpetrators circulate to evade their responsibilities. This, in turn, has made general people inured to the reports of environmental disasters and climate change. Such denialism and indifference have, over time, culminated into the present crisis of the Anthropocene. Lawrence Buell has famously claimed that environmental catastrophes implicate a failure of human imagination in understanding our relationship with the nonhuman world. Literary texts, nonetheless, can help us reimagine the present crisis by virtue of their scope to represent emergency situations as narratives of felt experiences or tragedies. South Asian ecofiction, such as Amitav Ghosh\u2019s The Hungry Tide<\/em> and Indra Sinha\u2019s Animal\u2019s People<\/em>, represent actual tragic stories of marginalized people who are victims of environmental derangement. If appraised from the classical, Aristotelian perspective, these stories can create catharsis of readers\u2019 emotion and awaken them to the question of justice for subaltern communities whose victimhood is caused by an ongoing history of discriminatory capitalist interventions into their environment. Thus, the broad field of humanities can benefit from reading literary texts as counternarratives to the general sense of denial which is embedded in the creation, circulation and recognition of global emergencies. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Muhammad Manzur Alam is a Doctoral Candidate in the Department of English, West Virginia University, and is also an Assistant Professor (on leave) at East West University, Bangladesh. His research focuses on exploring the representation of postcolonial ecologies in Anglophone South Asian novels. He has made conference presentations and publications on areas such as South Asian literature, political discourses, ecocriticism, and the Indo-Caribbean writer V.S. Naipaul.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>\n

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<\/a>Climate Justice Now: Transforming the Anthropocene into the Ecozoic Era<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Cara Judea Alhadeff<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Climate Justice Now: Transforming the Anthropocene into The Ecozoic Era<\/em> asks: How can citizen-activists embody symbiotic solutions as we transition from our petroleum-pharmaceutical-addicted cyber-culture to an economics of solidarity? How can we joyfully inspire, educate, and mobilize collective action among peoples of diverse backgrounds? Through an urgent commitment to creative-waste collaborations, we can transform market-capitalism\u2019s everyday violence\u2014consumption and entitlement\u2014creating a bridge between infrastructural change and individual responsibility that gleans from indigenous wisdom and earth-based perspectives. Transitioning from our ethnocentric, xenophobic Anthropocene Era (plutocrat-driven democracies embedded in bacteria-phobia, commercialized-childhood, extractive industries, GMOs) into a biophilic social permaculture requires an embodied awareness of interdependency. This is a foundation for the Ecozoic Era\u2014Thomas Berry\u2019s concept that humans can share mutually-beneficial relationships with the world around us; intellectually, structurally, and spiritually. Rather than compete, we integrate with our natural environments.<\/span><\/p>\n

As all forms of climate chaos\/climate crises are interconnected, all forms of climate justice are equally interconnected. Like the metabolism of the human body and the earth\u2019s tendency towards homeostasis, the metabolism of our culture must be scrutinized as a relational organism. An urgent embodiment of interrelations between environmental degradation and marginalized ethnic, racial, and economic communities in conjunction with a sense of beauty, intuition, play, and joy requires multilateral paradigm shifts. Patterns in nature and cross-cultural histories can be used as models for human interactions as we embody climate justice. Social permaculture practices this creative response to colonialist legacies of economic oppression and extractive industries\u2014recognizing, designing, and implementing emancipatory interrelationships. It is applied ecology<\/em>\u2014co-creating new infrastructures for every social system. From this commitment, we can engage collaborative economic tools for biocultural transformation. When we implement social-permaculture-design infrastructures, we debilitate\u00a0how<\/em>\u00a0systemic economic violences (from e-waste to 5G\/AI\/Internet-of-Things juggernaut) are interconnected. This urgent approach to climate-crisis mitigation weaves together simultaneous individual, community, and infrastructural change.<\/span><\/p>\n

Cara Judea Alhadeff, PhD, author of dozens of books and articles on philosophy, art, gender, ethnic, and cultural studies\u2014including critically acclaimed Viscous Expectations: Justice, Vulnerability, The Ob-scene (PennsylvaniaState University Press, 2014) and Zazu Dreams: Between the Scarab and the Dung Beetle, A Cautionary Fable for the Anthropocene Era (EifrigPublishing, 2017), explores global-corporatocracy, petroleum-parenting, social-ecology\/permaculture, economics, eroticism, and the pharma-addictive medical industry. Her theoretical and visual work is the subject of documentaries for international public television. Alhadeff’s photographs\/performance-videos are in numerous collections\u2014including MoMASalzburg and SanFranciscoMoMA. Former professor of Performance&Pedagogy (UC SantaCruz) and Critical Philosophy (Global Center for Advanced Studies), she lives\/parents a creative-waste life. (<\/strong>www.carajudea.com\/www.zazudreams.com<\/strong><\/a>)<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>\n

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<\/a> 2020 Vision: Futurity and Climate Crisis<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Siobhan Angus and Samantha Spady<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

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In this presentation, we examine the state of the field of different conceptions of climate futurity. What changes has the Anthropocene brought to what futures are now possible? Cultural conceptions of the future in Western thought have historically been rooted in ideas of linear progression. While critiques of this metanarrative have existed for centuries\u2014especially from those whose lives are deemed sacrificable for the good of progress\u2014the Anthropocene has introduced an existential challenge to the myth of progress. The types of futures that Western society has largely taken for granted in the past now seem impossible.<\/span><\/p>\n

Our analysis is rooted in the Americas, with a focus in Canada. Rather than focus on academic discussions, we are interested in how the future is being imagined, prefigured, and enacted in political, economic, artistic, and activist spheres. The terrain is shifting constantly and many competing visions of the future exist. In light of this, we have selected a few sub-themes that have resonance in our current moment: the future as catastrophe, eco-modernist utopianism, the Green New Deal, extractive futurities, and Indigenous futurities. We offer an overview of each strand of futurity and an assessment of aesthetic practices that are prefiguring these futures in the face of the climate crisis.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Siobhan Angus is a Banting Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of the History of Art at Yale University. Angus studies the history and theory of photography with a focus on artistic process, labour history, and the environmental humanities. She holds a PhD in Art History and Visual Culture from York University, where she studied the visual culture of resource extraction in Canada. In 2019\/2020, she is Friends of the American Philosophical Society Fellow at the American\u00a0Philosophical Society and a visiting scholar at the Center for Creative Ecologies at the University of\u00a0California Santa Cruz.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

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Samantha Spady is an interdisciplinary scholar working in the fields of human geography, settler colonialism, feminist technoscience, and labour studies. She is currently a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Alberta. Her work looks at the role that post-secondary institutions play in extractive economies and knowledge production. In this project she is examining how universities that have signed onto the Truth and Reconciliation Commission\u2019s Calls to Action, are also actively soliciting money and resources from mining and oil and gas companies engaged in contested Treaty territories; tracing how universities are simultaneously extracting while reconciling. She earned her PhD in Social Justice Education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University in Toronto. Her PhD research examined how oil and gas workers understand the conflicts surrounding the Alberta tar sands, and the ways in which they make sense of, and make the place of their work.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>\n

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<\/a>Eco-Art and Sciences in an Age of Cynicism<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Thomas Asmuth and Sara Gevurtz<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

In the report “How fast are the oceans warming?”(Cheng et al. 2019), the authors present compelling and disheartening evidence that the world’s seas are warming up to 40% faster than suggested by a study five years earlier. In the face of this, Asmuth & Gevurtz are two artists who continue to explore the boundaries of transdisciplinary investigation and creativity in the face of overwhelming climate crises.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the past five years, Asmuth and Gevurtz have produced many installations through their project, Turbidity Paintings, that uses fieldwork as a merger of the arts and sciences. The partners use these activities as the raw materials to create objects which simultaneously exist as artifact and data measurement.\u00a0In this talk, Asmuth and Gevurtz will discuss how they critically examine how ecological conditions are communicated. In question are abstract visualizations of data points and graphing normally associated with this kind of work in data science. The team is critical of the separation of the tangible experience from the observable conditions and the separation this creates psychically from the audience.<\/span><\/p>\n

The team combines the measurements and materials (data points, photographs, water, and other items) collected during interdisciplinary fieldwork to create installation art. They attempt a more direct interaction with the viewer. They adapt pedagogies historically based on wonder and discovery to function in the age of crisis, cynicism, and uncertain ecological futures. They are compelled as artists and citizen-scientists to educate, communicate, and inspire in the shadow of overwhelming climatic upheavals.<\/span><\/p>\n

Thomas Asmuth is a transdisciplinary artist and an Associate Professor of digital and experimental media at the University of West Florida. Asmuth collaborates with artists and scientists to study issues of water quality. His work has resulted in art\/science installations and novel designs for water testing equipment.\u00a0<\/em><\/span>Asmuth’s awards include a Florida Humanities Council grant and a Florida Research Fellowship. Asmuth’s work has appeared at the Southeastern College Art Conference, the Association for Environmental Studies and Sciences, the International Symposium on Electronic Art, Balance UnBalance 2017, Laguna Art Museum, Zer01 Biennial, Montalvo Arts Center, and the Tang Teaching Museum.<\/em><\/p>\n

Sara Gevurtz is currently an Assistant Professor at Hastings College, but will be joining the faculty at Auburn University in the fall. Gevurtz graduated from the CADRE Laboratory for New Media at San Jose State University where she received a MFA in Digital Media Art. She received her bachelor\u2019s degree in Evolution, Behavior and Ecology Biology from USCD. Due to her interdisciplinary background, her artistic research focuses on ecological and environmental issues.\u00a0<\/em><\/span>Gevurtz has been working on a collaborative, interdisciplinary project with the goal to create art that is data and data that is art. This project has been presented at both nationally and internationally, including Balance Unbalance 2017 in Plymouth UK and ISEA2018 in Durban, South Africa.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>\n

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<\/a>Against Urgency: Post-apocalyptic Latency Poetics and Living \u201cHere\u201d<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Stacey Balkun<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

In the age of the Anthropocene, it\u2019s easy to consider the creation and deployment of nuclear weapons as an ecological threat. However, unlike weapons facilities, many nuclear energy plants exist in plain view, protected by their surrounding notions of safety despite the imminence of invisible, enduring threats.Whereas critic John Gery terms poetry about immediate nuclear threat \u201capocalyptic lyric,\u201d poetry regarding the latent danger posed by nuclear power plants may appear too discreet to be \u201capocalyptic lyric\u201d yet too concerned with catastrophe to be mere meditations or witness, I propose that certain texts come together beneath the umbrella of \u201cpost-apocalyptic latency poetics.\u201d The poems investigated here suggest that the \u201cend\u201d of disaster is also the beginning of invisible violence which, though lacking urgency, pose an ongoing threat. Overall, the main work of post-apocalyptic latency poetics is to dismantle the link between damage and the image of a cataclysmic event, an effort which demands an examination and removal of several customary binaries. To convey the slow, ongoing threat, latent post-apocalyptic lyrics share, among other traits, a lack of closure that amplifies the sense of dormancy and danger continuously lurking in the aftermath of a nuclear event.<\/span><\/p>\n

Stacey Balkun is the author of three poetry chapbooks and co-editor of\u200b Fiolet & Wing: An Anthology of Domestic Fabulist Poetry\u200b. Winner of the 2019 \u200bNew South \u200bWriting Contest as well as \u200bTerrain.org\u200b\u2019s 10th Annual Contest, her work has appeared in \u200bBest New Poets 2018\u200b, \u200bCrab Orchard Review,\u200b \u200bThe Rumpus,\u200b and many other anthologies & journals. Stacey holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Fresno State and teaches poetry online at The Poetry Barn & The Loft.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>

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<\/a>Scientists and Fishermen: Environmental Theory, Myth and Practice in Amitav Ghosh\u2019s The Hungry Tide<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Akua Banful<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

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Writing of nature\u2019s perniciousness in A Passage to India, E.M. Forster\u2019s narrator remarks that the invisible world of nature is close at hand, unsettling visions of human dominance. If nature is closer at hand in the global south — a result of warmer climates and underdevelopment underwritten by global geopolitics — so is the urgency of climate change. Our climate reality has, like many disasters, heightened the inequalities that plague our world. This uneven fallout has also highlighted the inadequacies of the development model — itself ridden with stadialism — that transfers theories generated in the global north to communities in the south. Amitav Ghosh\u2019s novel The Hungry Tide offers a view of a rapidly changing landscape in the Sundarbans of South Asia. This serves as the stage for confrontations between western environmentalism and an integrated ecosystem that takes the enmeshment of the poor into account. In this paper, I will explore the circulation of Western environmental theories and histories, alongside indigenous myths of the Sundarbans in Ghosh\u2019s novel, arguing that in striking a balance between these two environmental perspectives — all of which reckon with devastating storms — The Hungry Tide attempts to theorize environmental urgency from the south.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Akua Banful is a Ph.D. candidate in English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University who works at the intersection of postcolonialism and ecocriticism. Her dissertation \u201cThe Hostile Tropics: Towards a Postcolonial Discourse of Climate,\u201d takes the colonial-era figuration of tropical climates as hostile to the health of European men as a launchpad for an interrogation of the ways in which notions of climate are constituted by science, as well as by discourses of imperialism, in order to ask what becomes of these notions and their cultural and political baggage in our postcolonial present.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>\n

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<\/a>Participatory Inclusion in Knowledge Creation in Public Posthumanities Research<\/strong><\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Laura Barbas-Rhoden<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

This presentation shares tools for collaborative knowledge creation in the public posthumanities. Drawing upon scholarship by Rosi Braidotti, Arturo Escobar, and Santiago G\u00f3mez-Castro, among other decolonial and posthumanities thinkers, I briefly discuss theoretical efforts that signal the importance of co-creation of knowledge in public posthumanities endeavors. I then draw a line of sight from theory to (1) design, (2) methods for data gathering, (3) analysis of data, (4) the presentation of data, and (5) dissemination. My emphasis is on participatory inclusion in each phase and the limits and tensions that arise in institutional and community contexts when doing participatory public posthumanities research.<\/span><\/p>\n

My discussion draws upon experiences of our institutionally-funded teams in the co-production of a suite of place-based research projects co-ideated through cross-sector conversations, carried out by bilingual teams of undergraduate students and faculty, and inclusive of diverse voices in Spartanburg, South Carolina. Spartanburg is the southernmost county in Appalachia; it is traversed by two interstate highways; contains an inland port; and is the region of the United States with the highest per capita direct foreign investment. Because equity and inclusion efforts in South Carolina have traditionally been conceptualized in terms of Black and white populations, the presence of a rapidly growing Latinx population \u2014as well as refugee communities from Southeast Asia, Ukraine, and Africa\u2014 complicates public narratives and presents opportunities for reframing conversations about how power operates in place (and displacement or migration) and over time. Each context in which public posthumanities work is done will need to engage situational factors unique to the place or project. For that reason, this talk combines discussion of transferable frameworks, with guiding questions we asked ourselves, to make transparent our process and to underscore that the democratizing and participatory potential of work will evolve from conditions specific to each project.<\/span><\/p>\n

Laura Barbas-Rhoden is Professor of Modern Languages, Literatures, and Cultures at Wofford College; co-President of the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment; founder of Alianza Spartanburg; and author of Writing Women in Central America (Ohio UP, 2003) and Ecological Imaginations in Latin American Fiction (UP of Florida, 2011). She has published numerous peer-reviewed articles and chapters on Latin American texts, as well as on civic engagement, partnerships, and global learning.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>

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<\/a>Environmental Knowledge Production: A Case Study of Journalism Students at the University of Tyumen<\/strong><\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Irina Beliakova and Elena Plakhina<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Tyumen has been Russia\u2019s center for oil industry since discovery of oil reserves in the region in the 1960s. For years of active oil recovery, environmental issues have been accumulating: those connected with industry\u2019s impact on the environment (different kinds of pollution, damaging natural habitats, etc.) as well as creating infrastructure for comfortable urban environment (or sometimes failure to do it). Interestingly, the current problems we are facing now were predicted 50 years ago by the local writer K. Ya. Lagunov in several of his novels. These novels are part of the syllabus of the elective environmental journalism course in University of Tyumen. Beside this, they use a variety of other sources to create environmental knowledge and find mechanisms of its transfer to the local community.<\/span><\/p>\n

In this presentation, we are planning to use a system operator analysis (H. Altschuller) to visualize the task of environmental education and suggest ways of its evolution. We are going to show how environmental knowledge is produced in journalism students taking into account the past, present and future perspectives within the system of university, subsystem of the Department of Journalism and supersystem of the Tyumen region. At the end of the elective course, students should have a comprehensive understanding of the evolution of ecological thinking in the region\u2019s authorities, educationalists and intellectuals. We will interview students and let them express their satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the practiced system of knowledge production and the knowledge on the environmental situation in the region they acquired.<\/span><\/p>\n

We are going to show how this production of knowledge can become biased and how journalists act as environmental influencers among the local community on behalf of the municipal government resulting in them getting caught in the crossfire between the general public and authorities.<\/span><\/p>\n

In conclusion, we are going to suggest ways for young journalists to disseminate environmental knowledge observing the professional code of ethics.<\/span><\/p>\n

Irina Beliakova is an associate professor at the Department of English Philology and Translation, University of Tyumen, Russia. I teach courses in English grammar and conversation; intercultural communication, lexicology of the English language and English for the Media. I defended a Candidate\u2019s dissertation thesis (Russian PhD equivalent) on the Lexical fields of beauty and ugliness in Russian and English. My research interests include ecolinguistics and ecological esthetics, the evolution of the ideas of beauty in Russian and Anglo-Saxon literature, ethics and esthetics, development of creative skills in classes of English, digitalization of education.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Elena Plakhina is an associate professor at the Department of Journalism, University of Tyumen, Russia. I teach courses in the history of foreign journalism, mass media techniques and technologies, journalism and myths, ecological journalism. I defended a Candidate\u2019s dissertation thesis (Russian PhD equivalent) on the Lexical field of space in the lyrics of V. Zhukovsky, A. Pushkin and M. Lermontov. I am interested in media studies, environmental journalism, cognitive linguistics, language and culture. I am a regular participant of the World Journalism Education Congress.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>\n

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<\/a>Purposeful Memoir as a Path to a Thriving Future: The Worldwrights Lead the Way<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Jennifer Browdy<\/span><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

As we face the hydra-headed emergencies of climate disruption, pandemic and global economic collapse, humanities scholars have struggled to retain our sense of relevance. My 2017 memoir,\u00a0What I Forgot…and Why I Remembered, explored how my education and social conditioning shifted me ever further away from the connection to the natural world that had been primary for me as a child. Finding my way back to that connection seemed urgent for me personally, and as I realized in the course of writing the memoir, it is crucial for us all at this critical juncture in human history. All of the crises that face us can be traced back to our collective alienation from the natural world, and can only be solved by recognizing our inter-being with all life on Earth and reconnecting with the sense of wonder and reverence for nature that most children instinctively feel.<\/span><\/p>\n

Although it may seem counterintuitive, I believe that doing the inner work of purposeful memoir is a necessary prerequisite for effective action in the world. We cannot solve the crises that face us without a deep understanding of how we got here, individually, as a society, and as an Earth system, a planet. Thus I write, teach and study what I callpurposeful memoir\u00a0that\u00a0aligns the personal, political and planetary, setting our individual life experiences into the broader social and environmental landscapes in which we live.<\/span><\/p>\n

In my ASLE presentation, I will discuss:<\/span><\/p>\n