EHI Distinguished Lecture

Following the lead of the Buen Vivir movement in South America, the environmental humanities are rethinking the ontology of interconnections among humans and nonhumans. By focusing on the Sacha-Novela, which literally means "jungle novel,” as a lens for exploring one representative sustainability case, I bring attention to these interconnections, as I focus on the ways humanities analysis illuminates issues surrounding peasant migration from ‘foreign’ Andean ecologies into Peruvian Amazonian ecologies. I explore how this analysis is rooted in the arts’ and the humanities’ involvement in problem-solving projects and examine how the SARAS Institute is advocating for increased collaborations among the humanities, natural sciences and publicly engaged research and education. I’ll also reflect on emerging global sustainability networks, including UNESCO BRIDGES, that are boldly reconfiguring the importance of the humanities within the natural and sustainability science fields.

Jorge Marcone is a Professor at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, and Associate Dean of Humanities in the School of Arts and Sciences. He is the Co-Chair of the Advisory Board for the South American Resilience and Sustainability Studies Institute, in Uruguay. Marcone’s research focuses on the history of ecological thinking and publicly engaged research in Hispanic literatures and cultures, and on the representation of Amazonia in literature, film, and other visual arts. Marcone has published on Alexander von Humboldt, Amazonian colonial literature, ecology in the Spanish American Regional Novel, the work of Pablo Neruda, José María Arguedas, Mario Vargas Llosa, and the emergence of the “environmentalism of the poor,” among other topics. He is the co-editor of the Historia de las literaturas en el Perú. Tomo V. Narrativa peruana del s. XX (In press).

Please direct all questions to EHI Director, Joni Adamson, at Joni.Adamson@asu.edu.

This event is co-sponsored by the ASU Institute for Humanities Research, the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory, the ASU English Department, ASU’s School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies and ASU’s School of International Letters and Cultures and ASU's Center for Jewish Studies.