Branigin Lecturer, Lawrence Buell

Uses and Abuses of Environmental Memory Tuesday, April 20, 2010 University Club, Indiana Memorial Union How can the arts of memory counteract the inertial effects of what psychologist Peter Kahn, Jr. has called “intergenerational environmental amnesia”? The lecture seeks to offer a series of general reflections in response to key questions such as: How much reliance is to be placed on memory as carrier of environmental understanding and thereby as stimulus to environmentalist intervention? To what extent can memory–variously defined–be seen as a resource for reinvisioning (and renegotiating) the relation between human and other-than-human realms in an era of environmental crisis? Lawrence Buell is the Powell M. Cabot Professor of American Literature, Harvard University, and one of the most prominent literary and cultural critics writing today. His interests include environmental(ist) discourses, issues of cultural nationalism, and comparatist approaches to American literary study including transatlantic and postcolonial models of inquiry.