The Geoscience Department Earth Talks Speaker Series will host James Armstrong to present “The Anthropocene and the Fictions of Modernity” at 4 p.m. Monday, Sept. 12, in the Science Laboratory Center Auditorium, room 120.
Armstrong will try to answer the question, “Why do we find it so hard to believe we are altering the climate, even though the science is both straightforward and ever-more convincing?” Armstrong will discuss what the Anthropocene tells us about the limitations of the foundational beliefs of modernity and posit ways humans might come free of those beliefs to better confront the challenges of climate change.
Armstrong is a professor in the English department at WSU and has taught creative writing and American literature at Northwestern University and at the School of Art Institute of Chicago’s Writing Program. Armstrong received his master’s from Western Michigan University and his Ph.D. in American literature from Boston University. He has received the PEN-New England Discovery Prize for poetry in 1996 as well as an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in poetry and a Minnesota State Arts Board Fellowship in poetry.
This event is free and open to the public.
The series serves as a forum through which experts from academia, government and the private sector, as well as WSU students and faculty, share their experiences and research results with the WSU geoscience community. The series also provides a venue for discussions of professional, educational, employment issues related to geology, natural resources, Earth science teaching, and other related disciplines.
For more information, contact Stephen Allard.
