As part of the Unraveling the Anthropocene project, this public reading group will begin its monthly sessions in February and will conclude in July. Participants may join for as many sessions as they would like, and may complete as many readings as they prefer. We invite the community to be part of a casual but enriching discussion of the subjects that comprise the overarching project: race, environment, pandemic.
Comments will be posted on a Goodreads forum, and we will meet every four weeks on Zoom to conclude each monthly session. Some materials will be available for free on the web or uploaded to a Google Drive folder.
Monthly Themes and Reading Schedule:
Session 1 (February 2021): Race in the United States
Novel: Jesmyn Ward, Sing, Unburied, Sing (2017)
Article: James Baldwin, "A Letter to My Nephew 100 Years after Emancipation" (1962)
Film: Fruitvale Station (2013), dir. Ryan Coogler (available on Netflix)
Article: James Baldwin, "A Letter to My Nephew 100 Years after Emancipation" (1962)
Film: Fruitvale Station (2013), dir. Ryan Coogler (available on Netflix)
Session 2 (March 2021): Environment - Anthropocene
Book: Kathryn Yusoff, A Billion Black Anthropocenes, or None (2018)
Book: Greta Thunberg, No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference (2019)
Poetry: selections from Juliana Spahr and Julia Kasdorf
Documentary: Anthropocene: The Human Epoch (2018) (streaming on Kanopy)
Book: Greta Thunberg, No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference (2019)
Poetry: selections from Juliana Spahr and Julia Kasdorf
Documentary: Anthropocene: The Human Epoch (2018) (streaming on Kanopy)
Session 3 (April 2021): Environmental Justice and Indigenous Science Fiction
Article: Kyle Whyte, "Indigenous science fiction for the Anthropocene: Ancestral dystopias and fantasies of climate change crises” (2018)
Article: Alexandra Alter, "We’ve Already Survived an Apocalypse’: Indigenous Writers Are Changing Sci-Fi” (2020)
Poetry: selections from Juliana Spahr and Julia Kasdorf
Short Stories: selections from Grace Dillon, Walking the Clouds: An Anthology of Indigenous Science Fiction (2012)
Article: Alexandra Alter, "We’ve Already Survived an Apocalypse’: Indigenous Writers Are Changing Sci-Fi” (2020)
Poetry: selections from Juliana Spahr and Julia Kasdorf
Short Stories: selections from Grace Dillon, Walking the Clouds: An Anthology of Indigenous Science Fiction (2012)
Session 4 (May 2021): Responses to the Pandemic
Book: excerpt from Slavoj Žižek, Pan(dem)ic! COVID-19 Shakes the World (2020)
Book: excerpt from Marina Sitrin and Colectiva Sembrar (eds.), Pandemic Solidarity: Mutual Aid during the Covid-19 Crisis (2020)
Article: Alex Liebman, Kevon Rhiney, and Rob Wallace, "To die a thousand deaths: COVID-19, racial capitalism and anti-black violence” (2020)
Visual Art: Suzette Marie Martin, Viral Load (2020)
Book: excerpt from Marina Sitrin and Colectiva Sembrar (eds.), Pandemic Solidarity: Mutual Aid during the Covid-19 Crisis (2020)
Article: Alex Liebman, Kevon Rhiney, and Rob Wallace, "To die a thousand deaths: COVID-19, racial capitalism and anti-black violence” (2020)
Visual Art: Suzette Marie Martin, Viral Load (2020)
Session 5 (June 2021): Immigration, Refugee Crisis
Documentary: Human Flow (2017), dir. Ai Weiwei (available on Amazon Prime)
Short Story: Viet Thanh Nguyen, "The Americans" (2017)
Article: Joe McCarthy, "Why a Climate Refugee Crisis Is Actually Far from Inevitable" (2020)
Short Story: Viet Thanh Nguyen, "The Americans" (2017)
Article: Joe McCarthy, "Why a Climate Refugee Crisis Is Actually Far from Inevitable" (2020)
Session 6 (July 2021): Technology and the Environment
Book Chapter: Alenda Y. Chang, "Collapse," in Playing Nature: Ecology in Video Games (2019)
Book Chapter: Brian Jefferson, "How to Program a Carceral City," in Digitize & Punish: Racial Criminalization in the Digital Age (2020)
Article: Sheena Stolz and Sarah-Indra Jungblut, "Our Digital Carbon Footprint: What's the Environmental Impact of the Online World?” (2019; trans. Marisa Pettit)
Book Chapter: Brian Jefferson, "How to Program a Carceral City," in Digitize & Punish: Racial Criminalization in the Digital Age (2020)
Article: Sheena Stolz and Sarah-Indra Jungblut, "Our Digital Carbon Footprint: What's the Environmental Impact of the Online World?” (2019; trans. Marisa Pettit)