Jennifer Fay: Do We Know the Anthropocene When We See It?

Thursday / March 5, 2020 / 4:15 p.m.
Skillman Library, Gendebien Room

Dr. Jennifer Fay will discuss her work on Inhospitable World: Cinema in the Time of the Anthropocene as part of the 2019–20 Lafayette Environmental Humanities Series.

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.

Free for all! No tickets required.

About Prof. Fay
Jennifer 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. Her research and teaching are broadly concerned with transatlantic film and media theory, environmental criticism, including critical Anthropocene studies, and the relationship between aesthetics and politics.

Presented by the Lafayette College Film and Media Studies Program, Environmental Science and Environmental Studies, Engineering Studies, and the Lafayette Forum on Technology & the Liberal Arts.