Speaker: Dr. Emily Raboteau, Department of English, The City College of New York
Title: Communicating Climate Change
Abstract: What role can writers play in the fight against climate change? Some writers use their craft to bear witness to an increasingly unlivable world; some translate scientific information for a lay audience, others go further, not only addressing the connections between human activities and environmental catastrophe, but also taking action to change it, and compelling others to do the same. This talk will focus on how blending personal testimony with science in our writing can make pathways for reimagining how we can evolve in a context of persistent ecological crisis, with the aim of shifting policy.
Bio: Emily Raboteau is a professor in the English Department, where she teaches creative writing. Her books are the critically acclaimed novel, The Professor’s Daughter, and a work of creative nonfiction, Searching for Zion: The Quest for Home in the African Diaspora, winner of the 2014 American Book Award. For the past year she has been writing longform essays about climate change in such venues as New York Magazine, Medium, and the New York Review of Books.
Link: https://www.thecut.com/2020/01/a‐year‐of‐talking‐about‐climate‐change.html