Event

Victorian Ecotime: Inventing, Forecasting, Temporalizing

Fri, May 4, 2018

9:00 AM–7:00 PM

Martin E. Segal Theatre

Join us for the 2018 Victorian Studies Conference “Victorian Ecotime: Inventing, Forecasting, Temporalizing.” Victorian ecological work allowed for an expanded sense of time, from deep time (geologic, pagan, archaeological history) to future catastrophe (sun death, resource depletion, catastrophic endings). This new temporality destabilized Victorians but also allowed for previously unimaginable forecasts. Looking at the temporal sweep of ecological discourse in the 19th century allows us to interrogate contemporary ideas of climate change, a link that will be heightened by our inclusion of a roundtable with specialists addressing how ecocriticism speaks to fields from postcolonialism to early modern culture.

SCHEDULE:

Moderator: Michael Tondre (SUNY Stony Brook)

9:00-10:30AM – INVENTING ECOHISTORIES

Dennis Denisoff (University of Tulsa): “Eco-Paganism as a Trans-historical Politics”

Siobhann Carroll (University of Delaware): “‘Peat Archives and Coal Plots: Suspect Energies in the Historical Novel”

10:30-10:45AM – Break

10:45-12:15PM – IMAGINING ECOFUTURES

Mark Frost (University of Portsmouth): “Ecotimes, ecocrisis, and the pastoral in late Victorian disaster science fiction”

Deanna Kreisel (University of British Columbia): “The Future and its Discontents: Eco-Time in Two Victorian Texts”

12:15 – 2:15 PM: LUNCH (on your own)

2:15-3:45PM – MAPPING ECOFORMS

Devin Griffiths (University of Southern California): “Just in Time Formalism: Darwin, Entrainment, and the Ecology of Form”

Nathan Hensley (Georgetown University): “‘* * * * / * * * * / * * * *’: Boundary Event and the Problem of Genre”

3:45-4:00PM – Break

4:00-4:45PM – ECOCRITICISM ACROSS TIME AND SPACE

Barbara Leckie (Carleton University): “Too Late”

4:45-6:00PM – ROUNDTABLE

Sonya Posmentier (New York University)

Jennifer Wenzel (Columbia University)

Ashley Dawson (The Graduate Center, CUNY)

Steven Mentz (St. John’s University)

6:00PM: RECEPTION (English Department Lounge, Room 4406)

Click here for more information on the speakers.

Conference organized by: Tanya Agathocleous, Richard Kaye, Caroline Reitz, and Talia Schaffer

Click here for more information about the conference on their official website.

Cosponsored by the Victorian Committee of the PhD Program in English, the CUNY Graduate Center, Dickens Studies Annual, he PhD Program in English and Advanced Research Collaborative.