Queer Ecologies, Climate Fiction, and Literary Communities in the U.S. South

Keywords: queer ecology, Black geographies, literary geography, storytelling, climate change communication
Session Type: Virtual Poster Abstract
Day: Sunday
Session Start / End Time: 2/27/2022 02:00 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/27/2022 03:20 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 38

Abstract

In August 2021, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released the first section of their most recent four-part report, spelling out the current state of the climate crisis as having effects that are likely to be “irreversible for centuries to millennia”. The dense, 1300 page report full of technical language can be difficult to parse out or visualize for those who are not science oriented or fluent in the debates of climate science. Even in the “Possible Climate Futures” section showing how the influence of a warming world will manifest, there is little space for a more nuanced discussion of the sociopolitical asymmetries associated with anthropogenic climate change. Making these connections between the “facts” of climate change and the social realities of its effects, more commonly referred to as environmental justice, should be the first step in moving towards greater public understanding of environmental disaster. My proposed doctoral research will investigate how these possible climate futures can be effectively communicated to the public through storytelling practices. Central to this project is the work of science fiction texts which engage with climate science, as well as bookstores and the local literary communities that grow from them. I focus specifically on the region of the U.S. South, an area of the United States projected to bear much of the weight of future climate change, as well as the birthplace of the environmental justice movement in the United States.