The Winona State University CLASP lecture series will host “Welcome to the Anthropocene–and Goodbye to Modernity” with Professor James Armstrong at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 24, in Stark Auditorium (room 103).
According to Armstrong, the Anthropocene is the new definition of the age we are living in, a time when human beings have become the primary driver of geological change on the planet. The presentation will address the latest thinking on what the Anthropocene means to our collective world view, including how it will change our definitions of what is human and what is natural, how destabilization of the climate challenges our Modernist narratives of progress and rationality, and what it will take to survive in this new era.
Armstrong grew up in southern Michigan and went to Northwestern University as an undergraduate. He has an M.F.A. from Western Michigan University and a Ph.D. in American Literature from Boston University. He has published poems and essays in TriQuarterly, RHINO, Porcupine, Gulf Coast, Orion, Poetry East and other journals. Armstrong received the PEN-New England Discovery Prize for poetry in 1996, and he has been awarded both an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in poetry and a Minnesota State Arts Board Fellowship in poetry. In October 2007, he was appointed Poet Laureate of the City of Winona.
Armstrong’s special area of interest is “nature and culture.” He has spent the past twenty years reading and writing about this topic, and has co-authored a book on the subject, which will come out in the fall.
For more information, contact Matt Bosworth at mbosworth@winona.edu.
