A Brief History of Environmental Humour
What is and can be the role of humour in environmental literature? Nicole Seymour will explore this question by discussing two primary Anglophone genres: nature writing and cli-fi. While the first has been widely stereotyped as preachy and sentimental, Seymour returns to its playful roots as well as its recent tradition of self-satire. And while cli-fi has a progressive reputation, she will show that the genre’s recent deployments of humour have had troubling effects, such as erasing Indigenous perspectives.
Seymour will place these phenomena in their larger contexts, including the development of queer ecologies as a critical framework and the rise of meta-modernism as a cultural sensibility. After her talk, she will be joined in conversation by Peter van Dam, Barnita Bagchi, and moderator Jesse van Amelsvoort. Together, they will think about environmental humour in other literary and cultural traditions and histories across Europe, South Asia, and North America. How do protest movements use humour and other playful affects? How to read Dutch environmental discourses and genres in this respect? And how does children’s literature incorporate humour?
Speakers
Nicole Seymour is Professor of English and Graduate Advisor for Environmental Studies at California State University, Fullerton. Her most recent books are Glitter (Bloomsbury) and Bad Environmentalism: Irony and Irreverence in the Ecological Age (University of Minnesota Press). She is working on a new book project about the right-wing appropriation of camp aesthetics.
Peter van Dam is professor of Dutch history at the University of Amsterdam. Inspired by social, environmental, and political history, he investigates how people attempt to change their relationships with each other and the environment. The handling of food and energy are central to this work. His latest book is Fair Trade: Humanitarianism in the Age of Postcolonial Globalization.
Barnita Bagchi is Chair and Professor in World Literatures in English at the University of Amsterdam. Her expertises on women’s writing, utopia, dystopia, heterotopia, and speculative scenarios has led to current work on ecologies, the environment, and literature.
Jesse van Amelsvoort (moderator) is a scholar of comparative literature, and a lecturer in European Studies, University of Amsterdam. His latest book is Post-National Worlds in Contemporary European Literature.
