Transatlantic Ecologies: Utopia to Zoonomia

bacon2May 16-17, 2014
Annual EMC Conference
Loma Pelona Center (1108)
McCune Conference Room (HSSB 6020)

The Early Modern Center at the University of California, Santa Barbara is pleased to announce our thirteenth annual conference, “Transatlantic Ecologies: Utopia to Zoonomia,” to be held on Saturday, May 17, 2014, featuring keynote speakers Daniel Brayton (Middlebury College) and Gordon Sayre (University of Oregon). This year’s conference will be held in conjunction with the Literature and Environment Center’s Symposium on Climate Change and Disaster, with keynote speakers Adrian Parr (University of Cincinnati), Steven Vanderheiden (University of Colorado, Boulder), and Janet Fiskio (Oberlin College). There will also be a plenary roundtable on “Temporality and the Anthropocene” linking the conference and symposium. Conference attendees and presenters are encouraged to attend both Friday’s and Saturday’s events.

Transatlantic Ecologies seeks readings of the complex and developing connections between ecological and global thought in the early modern period. When discussing burgeoning forms of early modern ecological awareness, how should we account for the complex networks of knowledge construction in the Atlantic world resulting from the confluence of European, African, and Amerindian cultures? And, how do nonhumans figure into this network? Namely, how do we account for the influence of diverse new world ecologies and changing conceptions of land, space, animal consciousness, and ecological interdependence? Broadly, we seek studies of early modern literature, history, and culture that explore how Atlantic peoples came to view themselves as world citizens through their interactions with nature, and as natural citizens through their interactions with an increasingly but inconsistently networked Atlantic world.

bartram-colocasiaFeatured Talks and Panels

May 16, 2014 | Literature and Environment Symposium on Disaster and Climate Change
1:00pm | Loma Pelona Center, 1108

May 16, 2014 | Literature and Environment and Early Modern Center Roundtable on “Temporality and the Anthropocene”
4:30pm | Loma Pelona Center, 1108

May 17, 2014 | Keynote: Daniel Brayton, “Theater of Fish: Staging Marine Environmental History”
12:45pm | McCune Conference Room (HSSB 6020)

May 17, 2014 | Keynote: Gordon Sayre, “American Degeneracy: Colonial Science and Environmental Anxiety in the 18th Century”
4:45pm | McCune Conference Room (HSSB 6020)

The EMC would like to thank the following conference co-sponsors

Center for Literature and the Environment

Interdisciplinary Humanities Center

Graduate Division

UCSB Global and International Studies

Comparative Literature & Latin American and Iberian Studies Programs

Departments of English, Feminist Studies, Film and Media Studies, History, & Spanish and Portuguese

Transatlantic Ecologies Flyer


Call for Papers


Conference Schedule

FRIDAY, MAY 16th: Literature and Environment Symposium on Disaster and Climate Change (Loma Pelona Center, 1108)

1:00 | Introductory Remarks: Professor Elizabeth Cook, UCSB

1:15-2:00 | Keynote: Janet Fiskio, Oberlin College

2:00-3:00 | Keynote: Steven Vanderheiden, University of Colorado, Boulder

3:00-3:15 | Coffee Break

3:15-4:30 | Keynote: Adrian Parr, University of Cincinnati

4:30-5:30 | Roundtable: Temporality and the Anthropocene

6:30-8:30 | Conference Dinner: Zaytoon

SATURDAY, MAY 17th: Early Modern Center Conference on Transatlantic Ecologies (McCune Conference Room, HSSB 6020)

8:30-9:00 | Coffee & Light Pastries

9:00 | Welcome Address: Professor William Warner, UCSB

9:15-10:25 | Panel: “Ecological Thought”
Moderator: Theresa Russ, UCSB

Steven Swarbrick, Brown University: “Elements, Atlanticisms, Ecologies: Biopolitics in Ralegh’s Discoverie
Joshua Bartlett, SUNY Albany: “‘The more I looked, the more I grew amazed’: An Ecological Reading of Anne Bradstreet’s ‘Contemplations'”
Pauline Goul, Cornell University: “Visions of Excess: Rabelais’s Environmental Crisis”

10:30-11:40 | Panel: “Capital, Labor, Nature”
Moderator: Bethany Wong, UCSB

John Easterbrook, New York University: “The Fertility of the Earth: Mercantilism as Ecological System”
Joseph Horan, Colorado School of Mines: “Envisioning Acclimatization: Transatlantic Refugees and the Plantation Enlightenment in Revolutionary France”
Sharon Kunde, UC Irvine: “Securing What You Can: The Fluid Precious in Moby-Dick and ‘Paradise of Bachelors, Tartarus of Maids'”

11:45-12:45 | Lunch

12:45-2:00 | Keynote Address: Dan Brayton, Middlebury College, “Staging the Marine Environment”
Introduced by Ken Hiltner, UCSB

2:05-3:15 | Panel: “Flora and Fauna”
Moderator: Thomas Doran, UCSB

Matthew Suazo, UC Santa Cruz: “Dumont de Montigny’s Frog and the Enlightenment Ecology of American Degeneracy”
Paul Sivitz, Idaho State University: “Transatlantic Collections and Connections: Science, Subscriptions, and Sense of Self”
Sienna Córdoba-Taylor, UCSB: “Early Modern Caribbean Animal Mobility”

3:15-3:30 | Coffee Break

3:30-4:40 | Panel: “Race and Indigeneity”
Moderator: Leah Fry, UCSB

Jeremy Chow, UCSB: “Nature’s Maternal Blackness and Slave Revolt in Neville’s The Isle of Pines
Nicholas Spengler, University of Edinburgh: “‘Barren spots fertilized’: Natural Law and Sustainability in Crèvecœur’s Nantucket”
Sören Hammerschmidt, Arizona State University: “Transatlantic Sancho”

4:45-6:00 | Keynote Address: Gordon Sayre, University of Oregon, “American Degeneracy: Colonial Science and Environmental Anxiety in the 18th Century”
Introduced by Elizabeth Cook, UCSB


Conference Hotel