Storytelling and Climate Change

Date: 

Thursday, September 16, 2021, 5:00pm to 6:00pm

Location: 

Zoom

In Literature for a Changing Planet, Martin Puchner, Byron and Anita Wien Professor of Drama and of English and Comparative Literature (FAS), brings forth vital lessons drawn from four thousand years of world literature about how we put ourselves on the path of climate change—and how we might change paths before it’s too late. Join Professor Puchner in a VPAL Signature Event conversation on the relationship between storytelling and climate change. 

In Literature for a Changing Planet, Martin Puchner, Byron and Anita Wien Professor of Drama and of English and Comparative Literature (FAS), brings forth vital lessons drawn from four thousand years of world literature about how we put ourselves on the path of climate change—and how we might change paths before it’s too late. Join Professor Puchner in a VPAL Signature Event conversation on the relationship between storytelling and climate change. 

The talk will surround his upcoming book Literature for a Changing Planet – publishers summary below: "Reading literature in a time of climate emergency can sometimes feel a bit like fiddling while Rome burns. Yet, at this turning point for the planet, scientists, policymakers, and activists have woken up to the power of stories in the fight against global warming. In Literature for a Changing Planet, Martin Puchner ranges across four thousand years of world literature to draw vital lessons about how we put ourselves on the path of climate change—and how we might change paths before it’s too late. From the Epic of Gilgamesh and the West African Epic of Sunjata to the Communist Manifesto, Puchner reveals world literature in a new light—as an archive of environmental exploitation and a product of a way of life responsible for climate change. Literature depends on millennia of intensive agriculture, urbanization, and resource extraction, from the clay of ancient tablets to the silicon of e-readers. Yet literature also offers powerful ways to change attitudes toward the environment. Puchner uncovers the ecological thinking behind the idea of world literature since the early nineteenth century, proposes a new way of reading in a warming world, shows how literature can help us recognize our shared humanity, and discusses the possible futures of storytelling. If we are to avoid environmental disaster, we must learn to tell the story of humans as a species responsible for global warming. Filled with important insights about the fundamental relationship between storytelling and the environment, Literature for a Changing Planet is a clarion call for readers and writers who care about the fate of life on the planet."

Speakers:

Martin Puchner, the Byron and Anita Wien Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Harvard University, is a prize-winning author, educator, public speaker, and institution builder in the arts and humanities. His writings, which include a dozen books and anthologies and over seventy articles and essays, range from philosophy and theater to world literature and have been translated into many languages. Through his best-selling Norton Anthology of World Literature and his HarvardX MOOC Masterpieces of World Literature, he has brought four thousand years of literature to audiences across the globe. His book, The Written World, which tells the story of literature from the invention of writing to the Internet, has been widely reviewed in The New York Times, The Times (London), the Financial Times, The Times Literary Supplement, The Atlantic, The Economist, among others, covered on radio and television, and has been translated into some twenty languages. It appeared on the Wall Street Journal bestseller list and received the Massachusetts Book Award. His next book, Literature for a Changing Planet, is due out soon. 
 

All Harvard students, faculty, and staff are welcome to join this event through Zoom. Registration required.