Realism? Horror? Climate Fiction? On the Challenges of Narrating the Anthropocene

Eva-Lynn Jagoe will discuss the limits and possibilities of different genres as they attempt to narrate anthropogenic environmental devastation. In particular, she investigates their capacity to represent the contemporary subject’s relationship to energy, capital, extraction, and pollution. This talk is not just a theoretical discussion of genre; it is a candid examination of Jagoe’s new experimental project, which is an attempt to write a novel of ideas for our contemporary condition. Drawing from her own family history of British industrialism in Catalonia in the 1920s, as well as her situatedness as a 21st-century Canadian energy subject, Jagoe’s fictionalized account narrates the confluence of power, money, and resource extraction that has both visibly and invisibly shaped her opportunities and her worldview.
 
Eva-Lynn Jagoe (PhD, Duke) is an Associate Professor of Latin American and Comparative Literature at the University of Toronto. Professor Jagoe’s areas of interest include: Environmental humanities, critical and cultural studies, affect and queer theory, film, psychoanalysis, literature, visual art, creative non-fiction, and experimental critical writing. She has written extensively about Latin American culture, and continues to work on that subject through contemporary visual art, cinema, and literature. But most of all, she considers herself to be a true comparatist, constantly seeking to understand interactions and influences that are not limited by national boundaries.

This event is organized by Wall Scholar Anna Casas Aguilar. Anna’s work explores the intimate connections between gender, nationalisms, and regionalisms in modern Spanish and Catalan literature and visual culture. 

Registration is required for this event.