Event 3: The Sawyer Seminar on the Environmental Humanities

Yesterday I attended an event put on by the department of the Environmental Humanities, one of their Sawyer Seminars. The topic of this talk was "The Anthropocene", or the concept of how our world is now human dominated, and what consequences this poses to the environment and climate. 

Me, before enjoying some refreshments :)

Prior to the event, I read four essays prepared for the event by the main speakers. The speakers and essayists were Dipesh Chakrabarty, Anahid Neressian, Peter Kareiva, and Dale Jamieson. I must admit I was a little star struck to be in a room with these four famous writers and about thirty faculty members and graduate students of the English, or other humanities departments.

Flyer with the day's speakers

The seminar was focused on the concept of the Anthropocene, or the age in which we humans dominate the planet. We talked a lot about climate change and the politics surrounding it, but we didn't dwell on the hard science of climate change. These literary critics and writers are not concerned about the science of the matter, but rather the language and dialogue surrounding climate change. 

I had never thought of climate change in this way before. We are used to thinking of the humanities and science separately, and when we think of climate change, we think of numbers, graphs, and scientific reports. But at the seminar we talked about how much language matters when we talk about anthropocene. 

What stuck with me most was Peter Kareiva's talk about how the science of climate change is not as objective and steady as we think, or like to think it is. Science is not objective, which explains why we have scientists arguing with one another, defending their beliefs. These scientists have a prior belief and opinion on climate change, and it shows in their research. Kareiva likens the dialogue of climate change to religious fervor. People believe what they will concerning climate change, and will defend their side to the death. Interestingly enough, there is no correlation between scientific literacy and believing that climate change is human induced. 

It was interesting to see science and literary critique come together to a productive seminar about climate change, and to see how literary critique can rise even non scientists to change the fate of human induced climate change. In class, we talk about the separation of the arts/humanities and science, and how detrimental it can be. Seeing these professors and great minds coming together to critique science in a literary way was nothing like I'd ever seen before. I think that these dialogues are important in order for people to come together and address climate change.

Signing in! Event was RSVP only. 

As productive as it was to see scientific and humanistic dialogue together, I still heard Anahid Neressian say "literary people will read science to critique it, but scientist will not read literary works". So even though this seminar was a great example of seeing art and science come together, there is still a lot to be done.

Though you can't attend this seminar anymore, I would definitely recommend any event put on by the Environmental Humanities, especially these Sawyer Seminars.  This coming Thursday, May 14 there is a seminar titled "Acidifying Oceans and Art" and I wholeheartedly recommend it! Email Michelle Niemann to RSVP at mniemann@g.ucla.edu.