"A science for the people": The Democratization of Science in Madhur Anand's and Adam Dickinson's poetry

Abstract

In 2005, epidemiologist Steve Wing argued for "a science of environmental justice." He wanted "a science for the people, applied research that addresses issues of concern to communities experiencing environmental injustice, poor public health conditions, and lack of political power" (61). The notion that communities could turn to science as a means of addressing the unequal burden of environmental harm has gained traction among environmental justice advocates in recent years, despite earlier beliefs that science could not be separated from corporate goals. This development marks an important turning point in the relationship between the environmental sciences and the public, in which laypeople are rightfully questioning who is capable of practicing science and for what purposes. Although many researchers support these community-oriented developments, scientific engagement with the public often still operates according to hierarchical model, in which scientists determine what knowledge is shared and how. In this paper, I reflect on the limitations of hierarchical forms of science communication and then turn to poets Madhur Anand and Adam Dickinson for the ways in which they articulate "a science for the people" by destabilizing the authority of the scientist and centring the public.

Bio

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.

The Good-Natured Environmentalist: Trevor Herriot's Grass, Sky, Song and the Modest_Witness@Populist.Turn

Abstract

The paper discusses the interwoven layers of narrative, ethical, and epistemological witnessing and modesty in Trevor Herriot's Grass, Sky, Song­­ in relation to populism as a political formation and set of affective-rhetoric practices that shift the status of the epistemological figure that Donna Haraway calls the "modest witness," whose self-effacement-as-objectivity once authorized modern science. Herriot's attention to the destructive effects of the nineteenth century field naturalist reports that literally opened the grasslands to settler agriculture politicizes their immodest witnessing while nevertheless taking them as documentary testaments to the birds of the unploughed prairie. His emphasis on humility and atonement as a mode of settler-Indigenous reconciliation and a new moral covenant with the land also provides insight into its polar opposite: shamelessness as a crucial affective-rhetorical dimension of the identity politics of Canadian right-wing populism, which couples a pro-oil, anti-climate-change stance with white settler pride and anti-Indigenous violence.

Bio

Dr. Cheryl Lousley is Lakehead University Research Chair in the Environmental Humanities, and Associate Professor at Lakehead University Orillia, cross-appointed to the departments of English and Interdisciplinary Studies. My focus is contemporary Canadian, Indigenous, postcolonial, and global environmental justice writing and cultural studies. My essays appear in The Oxford Handbook of Ecocriticism and Greening the Maple: Canadian Ecocriticism in Context, among other places, and include the "Ecocriticism" literary theory article in the forthcoming Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature. I respectfully acknowledge that I live, work, and teach on the traditional territories of the Anishinaabe nations who are party to the Williams Treaties (https://williamstreatiesfirstnations.ca/). I commit to respect for Indigenous people and to honouring their rights and relationships with the land and waters I now share and benefit from.

Reading Nature: Climate Crises, Local Nonfiction, and the Writing Classroom

Abstract

The generic composition classroom can offer an unexpected site for climate intervention among undergraduate students. This presentation outlines one approach to introducing first-year undergraduate students to environmental concepts and ecological thought, when neither the institution nor the students may expect the environmental humanities to be featured. Essentially, a book of local environmental nonfiction can provide ready entry into thinking ecologically, if students can be helped to appreciate the approach.

Bio

Richard Pickard lives and works on the traditional lands of the WSANEC, Lkwungen, and Wyomilth peoples, as an assistant teaching professor at the University of Victoria. His work in the Department of English and the university’s new program in Academic and Technical Writing has focused on composition instruction, professional communications, and literature and environment. His territorial acknowledgement for this conference is available on YouTube, through his panel’s discussion forum.