Sea Sense will focus on the narrative and representational aspects of early modern land/sea distinctions and the environmental concerns these distinctions foreground. The conference will explore the allegorical and rhetorical role oceans play in early modern conceptions of environmental catastrophe, and the limits and possibilities that oceans presented for thinking with ecocriticism in a deep historical context.

Keynote presentations will be given each day of the conference. On one day, Jeffrey Cohen (Dean of Humanities in The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Arizona State University and co-president of the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment) and Julian Yates (Professor of English and Material Culture Studies at University of Delaware) will jointly present their project,  “Ark Thinking,”  which addresses the environmental and ecological ramifications of the Old Testament, salvation narrative of Noah and the Ark. The other keynote speaker will be Steven Mentz (Professor of English at St. John’s University and author of  Shipwreck Modernity: Ecologies of Globalization 1550 – 1719).

View the conference website (including daily schedule) HERE. 

RSVP here: http://bit.ly/SeaSense