Howard E. Woodin Environmental Studies Colloquium Series Talk

Other Pastorals: Writing Race and the Environment

Jennifer Chang, Associate Professor of English and Creative Writing, George Washington University.

Cosponsored by Franklin Environmental Center and Bread Loaf Environmental Writers’ Conference

Leo Marx’s axiomatic definition of pastoral – “No shepherd, no pastoral” – suggests that pastoral may no longer be relevant in the twentieth-first century. But pastoral has always been a social form, drawing on the distances between city and country that go beyond mere topography. This talk will consider how the pastoral, as a mode of ecological engagement and sociocultural critique, gets re-imagined by contemporary American poets of color. 

Visit go.middlebury.edu/woodincolloquiumseries for information on how to view this lecture.