Happy Lunar New Year from the USC US-China Institute!
Karen Thornber, "Acquiescing to Environmental Degradation: Literary Dynamics of Resignation"
Professor Thornber will examine how selected works of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean fiction engage with the phenomenon of ecoambiguity (environmental ambiguity.
When:
September 24, 2012 4:15pm to 5:30pm
Where
Literature addressing environmental degradation frequently grapples with ecoambiguity (environmental ambiguity): the complex, contradictory interactions between people and environments with a significant nonhuman presence. One of the most disturbing forms of ecoambiguity is human acquiescence to environmental degradation: people doing very little if anything to improve obviously damaged environments and even going so far as denying that landscapes have been abused. Professor Thornber will examine how selected works of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean fiction engage with this phenomenon.
Karen L. Thornber is Harris K. Weston Associate Professor of the Humanities in the Department of Comparative Literature, Harvard University. She is the author of Empire of Texts in Motion: Chinese, Korean, and Taiwanese Transculturations of Japanese Literature (2009), which won the AAS’s John Whitney Hall Book Prize for the best English-language book published on Japan, and the International Comparative Literature Association’s Anna Balakian Book Prize for the best book in comparative literature published in the last three years by a scholar under age 40. Her second book Ecoambiguity: Environmental Crises and East Asian Literatures, was published by the University of Michigan Press last spring. Professor Thornber’s current book project is titled World Literature and Global Health: East Asia and the Indian Ocean Rim.
Cost:
This event is free and open to the public. No RSVP necessary.
Event Website URL:
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