Environmental Arts and Humanities Graduate Conference

  Program  and  Abstracts  

     

May  1,  2015   Asian/Pacific-­‐American  Room  

Memorial  Union  206   Oregon  State  University  

         

       

Sponsors    

OSU  Environmental  Arts  and  Humanities  Initiative     Horning  Endowment  in  the  Humanities  

Spring  Creek  Project     OSU  School  of  History,  Philosophy,  and  Religion  

OSU  College  of  Liberal  Arts      

Distinguished  speakers:    

Catherine  McNeur     (Assistant  Professor  of  History,  Portland  State  University)    

Eugene  Hargrove     (Professor  of  Philosophy,  University  of  North  Texas)    

  Art  on  display  by  these  graduate  students:  

  Elizabeth  Garton  (Oregon  State  University)  

Jamie  Mosel  (Oregon  State  University)          

Abstracts  for  all  graduate  student  presentations  at  the  end  of  this  program      

Morning schedule     8am:  Coffee/morning  snacks     Session  1  (830am-­‐945am)     Leslie  Ryan  (Oregon  State  University,  Forestry)    

“Performing  Agriculture:  The  ‘Survival  Pieces’  of  Eco-­‐Artists  Helen  and  Newton  Harrison”   Steven  Leone  (University  of  Oregon,  History)    

“Despair,  Defiance,  and  Deliverance:  Nature  and  Survivor  Memory  within  Germany’s  World   War  II  Concentration  Camps”  

Rachel  Rochester  (University  of  Oregon,  English)     “The  Animal,  The  Subaltern,  and  a  More  Inclusive  Politics  of  Agency  in  The  Hungry  Tide."  

Elizabeth  Garton  (Oregon  State  University)   “Science  Through  the  Lens  of  Art”  

    10am:  Coffee  break     Session  2  (1015am-­‐1145am)     Barbara  Canavan  (Oregon  State  University,  History  of  Science)    

“Opening  Pandora’s  Box  at  the  Roof  of  the  World”   M  Jackson  (University  of  Oregon,  Geography)    

“Representing  Glaciers  in  Modern  Icelandic  Art:  A  Spatial  Shift”   Shane  Hall  (University  of  Oregon,  English)  

“Environmental  Military  Violence  in  Hector  Tobar's  The  Tattooed  Soldier”   Sean  Munger  (University  of  Oregon,  History)  

“The  Weather  Watchers:  Amateur  Climatologists  and  Environmental  Consciousness,  1810-­‐ 1820”  

  12pm:  Lunch  (catered  for  conference  presenters)                

Afternoon schedule     1230:  Lunchtime  address       Eugene  Hargrove  (University  of  North  Texas)  

“Environmental  Philosophy  and  the  Culture  War”     Session  3  (130pm-­‐245pm)     Jamie  Mosel  (Oregon  State  University,  Art)  

“The  Problem  with  ‘Nature’:  A  Discussion  of  Dichotomous  Perceptions  and  Expressions  of   Life  and  the  Earth”  

April  Anson  (University  of  Oregon,  English)   “How  We  Fail:  Solar,  On  The  Turtle’s  Back  and  Survivance  Ecology  in  CliFi  Form”  

Jesse  Engebretson  (Oregon  State  University,  Forestry)   “‘Solitude  or  a  primitive  and  unconfined  type  of  recreation’:  The  Wilderness  Society’s   discursive  construction  of  authentic  wilderness  experiences”  

David-­‐Paul  B.  Hedberg  (Portland  State  University,  History)   “‘Because  that  is  how  white  people  legitimize  conservation’:  Wilson  Charley’s  Leadership   and  Yakama  Resource  Conservation  on  the  Postwar  Columbia  River”  

  3pm:  Coffee  break     Session  4  (315pm-­‐445pm)     Joshua  McGuffie  (Oregon  State  University,  History  of  Science)  

“No  Significant  Risk:  Creating  the  Norms  for  Public  Irradiation  at  Hanford”   Taylor  McHolm  (University  of  Oregon,  English)  

“‘It’s  there.  Think  about  that.’:  Warren  Cariou's  Representational  Challenges”   Ross  Coen  (University  of  Washington,  History)  

“Fresh  from  the  Can:  Salmon,  Pure  Food  Laws,  and  Perceptions  of  Nature  in  the  Early  20th-­‐ Century  Pacific  Northwest  Fishing  Industry”  

Tim  Christion  Myers  (University  of  Oregon,  Philosophy)   “Towards  an  Existentialist  Climate  Ethics:  The  Task  of  Confronting  Climate  Anxiety”  

  5pm:  Keynote  address     Catherine  McNeur  (Portland  State  University)     “Corrupt  Food  and  Corrupt  Politics  in  Antebellum  Manhattan”      

Titles and Abstracts of Graduate Student Presentations (alphabetical by presenter)   Anson,  April  (University  of  Oregon)     How  We  Fail:  Solar,  On  The  Turtle’s  Back  and  Survivance  Ecology  in  CliFi  Form     In   a   moment   marked   by   consumption   without   consequence   –   reliance   on   seemingly   invisible  forms  of  energy  and  intentionally  obscured  forms  of  violence  –  the  climate  crisis   has   elicited   calls   for   Climate   Fiction   (CliFi)   to   cultivate   an   environmentally   responsive   readership.  However,   theoretical   and   formal   foundations   for   conceiving   of   such   a   genre   have   tended   to   rely   on  Western   epistemological   structures,   ways   of   knowing   resonant   with  the  consumptive  narrative  of  progress  and  infinite  growth  central  to  scientific  racism   and  US  nationalism,  and  productive  of  ongoing  cultural  and  environmental  devastation.       Contrasting  Ian  McEwan’s  CliFi  novel  Solar  with  Thomas  King’s  On  The  Turtle’s  Back,  this   project   reads   both   novels   as   offering   an   important   investigation   into   how   a   narrative’s   regard  for  failure  can  work  to  mobilize  or  pacify  imagination.  Building  on  theorizations  of   environmentally  and  politically  potent  forms,  this  essay  compare  Solar’s  failures  to  On  The   Turtle’s  Back  for  how  they  suggest  a  mode  of  “survivance  ecology”  that  can  inform  CliFi’s   genre  considerations.  As  a   lens,  survivance  ecology  makes  clear   that   if   climate  change   is   certain  to  defy  our  expectations,  climate  fiction  must  privilege  ethical  imagination  as  well   as   the   possibility   of   adaptation   and   survival   in   the   face   of   such   overwhelming   and   unsettling   failure.   Locating   these   novel’s   most   provocative   “failures,”   the   presentation   turns  to  Greg  Johnson’s  IPCC  Haiku  and  Warren  Cariou’s  “Tarhands:  A  Messy  Manifesto”  to   investigate  how  survivance  ecology  may  be  a  useful   lens  for  considerations  of  genre  and   form  in  climate  change  fiction.     Canavan,  Barbara  (Oregon  State  University)    

  Opening  Pandora’s  Box  at  the  Roof  of  the  World       The   Qinghai-­‐Tibet   Plateau,   known   as   the  Roof   of   the  World,   is   at   the   center   of   complex  

changes   that   coincide  with  human  exploitation  and  rapid  environmental   shifts.  The  vast   Plateau  is  the  one  constant  among  mutable  actors  in  this  case  study:  a  new  high-­‐altitude   train  that  rushes  across  the  remo