Do We Know the Anthropocene When We See It?

As the next event in the 2019-20 Lafayette College Environmental Humanities Speaker Series, Dr. Jennifer Fay will discuss her work on Inhospitable World: Cinema in the Time of the Anthropocene. Fay is the Director for Cinema & Media Arts, Professor of Cinema & Media Arts and English, and Graduate faculty member of German Studies at Vanderbilt University.

In this talk, Fay examines the categorical confusions that circulate in The Anthropocene: The Human Epoch (Jennifer Baichwal, Nicholas de Pencier, and Edward Burtynsky, 2019). Fay considers the difference between images of contemporary nature and contemporary culture; between a work of art and an act of environmental destruction. For Fay, the categorical confusions of the film owe to what she calls "conceptual devastation" -- that we don't know what environmental damage looks like, nor do we create it, for the most part, with any intention. The Anthropocene: The Human Epoch is available to screen on Kanopy.