e-Race-sures

e-Race-sures live event*: A conversation about whose voices, stories, and bodies matter in the environmental humanities and creative communities, with Dr. Anita Girvan, Rina Garcia Chua (PhD candidate), and Dr. Andil Gosine, in tandem with a provocation for issue 19.1 of The Goose: Journal of Arts, Environment, and Culture in Canada

July 8, 2020 2:30pm to 3:15pm CST

*Must be registered on Eventbrite. See schedule for information about live events.

Alec Follett, Melanie Dennis Unrau, and Amanda Di Battista

Introducing The Goose Issue 18.1

Abstract

In this presentation, the co-editors of issue 18.1 introduce the issue and session while also reflecting on the history of The Goose. Amanda Di Battista, Alec Follett, and Melanie Dennis Unrau describe how the journal has developed since its inaugural publication in 2006 and gesture to how the journal's collaborative editorial collective, non-peer review format, and creative/academic contributions reinforce the journal's commitment to publishing a wide variety of work that speaks to socio-environmental issues and their amelioration. It is with great pleasure that we introduce issue 18.1 and the contributors who are participating in the launch: Renee Jackson-Harper, Aylin Malcolm, Monty Reid, Carol Alexander, and Ariel Kroon. A huge thank you to all Goose contributors and team members, past and present.

Bios

Amanda Di Battista lives and works on the traditional territory of the Neutral, Anishinaabe, Attawandaron, and Haudenosaunee peoples and on The Haldimand Tract promised to the Six Nations of The Grand River. Amanda is a past Co-Editor of The Goose, Project Coordinator for the Laurier Centre for Sustainable Food Systems, Co-Producer of the podcast Handpicked: Stories from the Field, and co-editor of Sustainable Food System Assessment: Lessons from Global Practice (Routledge, 2019).

Alec Follett is a white settler scholar who would like to acknowledge that he lives on the traditional territory of the Anishinaabe, Attawandaron, and Haudenosaunee peoples and works on The Haldimand Tract promised to the Six Nations of The Grand River. Alec holds a PhD in literary studies from the University of Guelph. He has recent publications in Canadian Literature and in the edited collection Alice Munro Country: Essays on Her Works I. He is also a co-editor of The Goose

Melanie Dennis Unrau respectfully acknowledges the original caretakers of the land known as Treaty 1/Winnipeg, where she lives as a visitor of mixed European ancestry on the traditional territory of the Anishinaabeg, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota, and Dene peoples and the homeland of the Métis Nation. Melanie is a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow studying petropoetics at Columbia University. She is a co-editor of The Goose, the author of Happiness Threads: The Unborn Poems (The Muses' Company, 2013), co-editor of Seriality and Texts for Young People: The Compulsion to Repeat (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).

Poetry Reading

This poetry reading features four poets—Carol Alexander, Renée Jackson-Harper, Aylin Malcolm, and Monty Reid—reading their works published in The Goose, 18.1. The reading is hosted by Emily McGiffin, outgoing Poetry Editor of The Goose, with technical support by Goose co-editor Melanie Dennis Unrau. Welcome Rina Garcia Chua, our new Poetry Editor beginning with Issue 18.2!

Carol Alexander, reading “Fever Palm,” is the author of the poetry collections Environments (Dos Madres Press, 2018) and Habitat Lost (Cave Moon Press, 2017) and the chapbook Bridal Veil Falls (Flutter Press, 2013). Alexander’s work appears in a variety of anthologies and journals. She holds a PhD in American literature from Columbia University. To read Carol’s work in The Goose, please visit https://scholars.wlu.ca/thegoose/vol18/iss1/16/

Renée Jackson-Harper, reading “Kootenay River & the Brilliant Dam,” holds a BA (University of Toronto), and an MA (York University). She is a PhD candidate in Canadian literature at York University and a faculty member in the departments of English and Creative Writing at Selkirk College in Nelson, BC. She is also a faculty adviser on the Black Bear Review, Selkirk College’s literary and arts magazine, and serves on the board of the Kootenay Literary Society. Her creative work has been published in numerous journals and was the recent recipient of Contemporary Verse 2’s Lina Chartrand Poetry Prize for emerging poets. To read Renée’s work in The Goose, please visit https://scholars.wlu.ca/thegoose/vol18/iss1/21/

Aylin Malcom, reading “CPR Crash Course,” grew up in a Canadian Pacific Railway family in Tiohtià:ke/Montréal. Aylin is writing a PhD dissertation on premodern literature and ecological knowledge at the University of Pennsylvania, with creative and critical work in DoubleSpeak, Manuscript Studies, and The Pulter Project. For more information, visit aylinmalcolm.com. To read Aylin’s work in The Goose, please visit https://scholars.wlu.ca/thegoose/vol18/iss1/25/

Monty Reid, reading “Beetle,” is an Ottawa-based poet with many publications. His most recent full-length poetry collection is Meditatio Placentae (Brick, 2016) and most recent chapbook is nipple variations (post ghost press). His awards include the Stephansson Award from the Writers’ Guild of Alberta (three times), the Lampman Award, National Magazine Awards and is a three-time nominee for the Governor General’s Award. Until recently he was the managing editor of Arc Poetry Magazine and is currently the director of VerseFest, Ottawa's international poetry festival. To see Monty’s work in The Goose, please visit: https://scholars.wlu.ca/thegoose/vol18/iss1/17/

Imagining Action In/Against the Anthropocene

Ariel Kroon

Imagining Action In/Against the Anthropocene: Narrative Impasse and the Necessity of Alternatives to Effect Resistance

Abstract

This is an excerpt from a published article that presents solarpunk as a site of potential for combating the dominant individualist narrative of the Anthropocene. I argue that the Anthropocene’s numerous interrelated socioeconomic, political, and environmental issues including the staggering loss of biodiversity across the globe and the reality of anthropogenic climate change constitute a significant psychological impasse that disempowers and disenfranchises humans living in this epoch, discouraging any resistance to it. I read “The Boston Hearth Project” by T.X. Watson as a short story demonstrative of an ethos of community and hope that resists the negative affects and oppressive social structures of the Anthropocene. In the article, I draw on the posthuman feminist philosophy of theorists such as Rosi Braidotti and Stacy Alaimo together with a reflection of the power of science fiction as a literature of cognitive estrangement. In this presentation, I summarize my argument that theorists and activists alike must turn to alternative narratives, such as those modelled in the emergent science fiction genre of solarpunk, in order to reject essentializing and individualizing forces and think multiply in order to realize meaningful resistance in a time of increasing fragmentation in society and destruction of the more-than-human world.

Bio

Ariel Kroon is a PhD candidate in English and film studies at the University of Alberta in amiscwaciwaskahikan, on Treaty Six territory. She studies narratives of crisis and survival in Canadian post-apocalyptic SF texts from 1948-1989 and their usefulness to interrupting the dominant imagination of the post-crisis future as a place of violent fascism and conservatism thriving in the midst of a dead nature. Her research is becoming more relevant as time progresses. She has published in Canadian Literature, worked with Just Powers to document the energy transition in Edmonton, Alberta, and combats Anthropocene anxiety via composting.

Discussion