Cornell University: The Wendy Rosenthal Gellman Lecture on Modern Literature by Lawrence Buell

The Cornell University Department of English presents the Wendy Rosenthal Gellman Lecture on Modern Literature by Lawrence Buell of Harvard University. This lecture is entitled, “Remembering the Future to Keep It from Happening: Environmental Imagination in the Anthropocene.”

The well-attested interdependences between the processes of memory and anticipation go a long way toward explaining both the power of environmental memory as a driver of bodies, minds, and peoples as well as its resistance to executive control. Nowhere are these complexities more revealingly on display than in works of creative imagination, which, so regarded, underscore the importance of the environmental humanities in confronting the challenges of the Anthropocene era.

The Gellman Lecture, featuring a distinguished scholar of modern literature, was established by a generous gift from Wendy Rosenthal Gellman ‘81, who majored in English at Cornell. This lecture is also part of the 2017-18 Environmental Humanities Lecture Series.

Reception to follow in the English Lounge, 258 Goldwin Smith Hall.