Eco-Archives, Environmental Imaginaries, and Climate Fictions of the Global South

John P. Walsh, University of Pittsburgh

This talk takes literature and film from around the Global South (West Africa, the Caribbean, and Polynesia) that turn popular notions of climate fiction, or “cli-fi,” on their head. Instead of future-oriented, post-apocalyptic stories that dominate the genre, these works bring readers and viewers to witness the historical and present-day collusion of colonialism and capitalism. By imagining other ways of inhabiting, living together, and even surviving an “end of a world,” these literature and film artists compel a necessary critique of prevailing discourses on “climate change” that obscure local and regional struggles for justice.

John P. Walsh is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of French & Italian at the University of Pittsburgh. His teaching and research interests include the literature and history of Haiti and the French Caribbean, as well as francophone literature of Sub-Saharan Africa. He is the author of two books: Free and French in the Caribbean: Toussaint Louverture, Aimé Césaire, and Narratives of Loyal Opposition (Indiana UP, 2013) and Migration and Refuge: An Eco-Archive of Haitian Literature, 1982-2017, (Liverpool UP, 2019). His current project, on climate fictions around the Global South, considers how the colonial history of climate change informs much contemporary cultural production on questions of migration and mobility, urban development and infrastructure, extraction of oil and minerals, and socio-economic inequality.

Dr. Walsh's book is open access & available! 

Migration and Refuge: An Eco-Archive of Haitian Literature, 1982-2017

go.uvm.edu/migrationandrefuge

To RSVP to the Faculty & Staff Reading Group or Grad Student Breakfast, please email Humanities.Center@uvm.edu

This event is sponsored by the UVM Humanities Center