In these days of digital communication and physical distancing, we want to support environmental humanities scholarship that has been temporarily effected. To this end, we are launching a new series of online book talks by authors of environmental humanities books. We will have talks every Monday afternoon that are online. Everyone is welcome to join the event to hear and ask questions.
Our first talk will be David Farrier discussing his new book Footprints on Monday, 23 March 2020 at 16:00 CET. Everyone is welcome to join the meeting live: https://zoom.us/j/700808200
In Footprints, David Farrier explores what traces we will leave for the very deep future. From long-lived materials like plastic and nuclear waste, to the 50 million kilometres of roads spanning the planet, in modern times we have created numerous objects and landscapes with the potential to endure through deep time. Our carbon could linger in the atmosphere for 100,000 years, and the remains of our cities will still exist millions of years from now as a layer in the rock. These future fossils have the potential to tell remarkable stories about how we lived in the twenty-first century.
Through literature, art, and science, Footprints invites us to think about how we will be remembered in the myths, stories, and languages of our distant descendants. Travelling from the Baltic Sea to the Great Barrier Reef, and from an ice core laboratory in Tasmania to Shanghai, one of the world’s biggest cities, David Farrier tells a story of a world that is changing rapidly, and with long-term consequences. Footprints will not only alter how you think about the future, it will change how you see the world today.
Great book for our times — and a terrific set of questions and answers.