Many long time readers of this blog are aware that we keep a side gig teaching American literature at Oakland University. Over the past several months, we’ve been collaborating with a couple of our magnificent colleagues to organize an exciting event to which we’d like to invite you: a one day symposium on climate change we’re calling “Climate Literacies: Reading the Anthropocene.”

The symposium will bring together scholars from the humanities and sciences, conservationists, leaders of Michigan environmental organizations, activists, and advocates for environmental justice to talk about politics, scholarship, the arts, the ecology of the Great Lakes, and the implications of climate change for Michigan and beyond. And don’t worry, Enbridge is sure to get a mention!

The event will take place October 15, starting, from 9 am-7 pm in the Oakland Room of the Oakland Center on the campus of Oakland University.

The symposium will begin with an address by the University of Michigan’s Henry Pollack, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize and author of A World Without Ice. It will conclude with a keynote address titled “Love and Death in the Anthropocene” by the brilliant and innovative literary scholar Dana Luciano of Georgetown University.

In between, we’ll have lots of conversation and fascinating presentations featuring, among others, some friends we’ve made here at the blog as well as others whose work we’ve long admired. In addition to OU faculty, including our co-organizers, Professors Andrea Knutson and Hunter Vaughan, symposium participants are:

• Nadia Bozak, novelist and Assistant Professor of English at Carleton University; her most recent novel is El Niño.
• Tom Baird, President, Anglers of the Au Sable
• Liz Kirkwood, Executive Director, For Love of Water
• Anne Vaara, Executive Director, Clinton River Watershed Council
• William Copeland, Climate Justice Director, East Michigan Environmental Council
• Jake McGraw, Michigan Coalition Against Tar Sands
• Mackenzie Maxwell, Environmental Educator, Ecology, Center Ann Arbor
• Stephanie Foote, Professor of English and Gender and Women’s Studies, University of Illinois and Co-Editor of Resilience: A Journal of Environmental Humanities
• Janet Fiskio, Associate Professor of Environmental Studies & Comparative American Studies, Oberlin College
• Denise Keele, Associate Professor of Political Science and Environmental and Sustainability Studies, Western Michigan University
• Margaret A. Crouch, Professor, Department of Philosophy and Program for Interdisciplinary Environmental Science and Society, Eastern Michigan University
• Ted Toadvine,  Professor of Philosophy and Environmental Studies, University of Oregon and editor-in-chief of Environmental Philosophy

The event is free and open to the public. Please join us– and bring your friends!