Literary Narrative Confronting a ‘Just and Orderly Transition’
In 2023 the COP meeting in Dubai called for a “just, orderly and equitable” transition away from fossil fuels. It would be difficult for any reasonable person to take a position against the transition. But perhaps reason is not helpful here and now. Karen Pinkus (Professor Emerita, Department of Romance Studies, Cornell University) put literary narratives (primarily French and Italian, although in theory Pinkus is suggesting a broader method) in conversation with climate policy, in order to undo a complacent faith in “transition.” What are its temporal logics? How will we know when it is over? Can economic transformations or scientific paradigm shifts provide useful models? And ultimately, how does literary writing, with its potential ruptures or failures, stand in relation to our collective dream of a smooth sail into a fossil-free future?
This Hilldale Lecture 2024 is presented by the UW-Madison Department of French & Italian. It is free and open to the public. More information is available here.
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Sponsored by the UW-Madison Center for the Humanities; the Department of French and Italian; the Department of History; the Center for Culture, History, and Environment; the Institute for Research in the Humanities; and the Department of Geoscience.
As an undergraduate student at Cornell, Karen Pinkus was a College Scholar and wrote a thesis on Renaissance Labyrinths under the direction of Professor Timothy Murray. She began a Ph.D. program in Renaissance Studies and later moved to Comparative Literature. Her Ph.D. thesis, supported in part by a Fulbright/ITT Fellowship in Bologna, was a critical reading of early modern emblems. Karen taught at Northwestern University and the University of Southern California before coming to Cornell, where she was a committed member of Romance Studies and Comparative Literature as well as a field member in Studio Art and Media Studies. She held various fellowships including a Getty Grant in Art History, a Senior Professorship at Rice University and a Leverhulme Fellowship at Cambridge. She continues to work in Italian, French and other literatures/cultures, in Environmental Humanities (with a focus on climate change). She is also a playwright, novelist and critic.