CURRENTS: Humanities Work Now
Erle Ellis & Tanya Olson
Wednesday, November 18, 2015 · 12 - 1 PM
In-Person
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Performing Arts & Humanities Building : 216
The Dresher Center’s CURRENTS: Humanities Work Now lunchtime series showcases exciting new faculty work in a dynamic and interdisciplinary setting. Designed to promote ongoing conversation and multi-disciplinary investigation, these works-in-progress meetings offer faculty and advanced graduate students an informal venue for presentation, conversation, and ongoing collaborative exchange.
Human Agency, Intentionality, and Niche Construction
Erle Ellis, Professor, Geography and Environmental Systems
Human societies are transforming Earth's ecology through sociocultural niche construction; an evolutionary process in which human environmental alterations affect the adaptive fitness of individuals, groups and societies. To what extent are these alterations intentional and the result of human agency? To what degree are human agency and intentionality important in guiding social processes operating at planetary scales? In efforts to engage with and alter Earth's social and ecological trajectory, these questions are central
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txt me im board: The Long Poem in Contemporary American Poetry
Tanya Olson, Lecturer, English
Tanya Olson will present work from a new poetry manuscript, Stay. Stay explores, in America today, the cost of remaining in one place (physically, intellectually, economically, and geographically), as well as the costs associated with leaving a place. Specifically, she’ll focus on txt me im board, a long poem at the heart of the collection. She’s especially interested in this piece as an example of the long poem genre and its place in contemporary American poetry.