Michael Warner (Yale University), “American Literature and the Rise of the Environment” (Yale Environmental Humanities, Yale Program on Climate Change Communication)

 From the earliest days of settler colonialism, writers have sought an imaginative language to comprehend the American environment.  The paradox was that the same perceptions that made nature available for settlement and exploitation also led to a fascination with what was unsettled, wild, and endangered.  Out of this the environmentalist tradition emerged, with Henry Thoreau, George P. Marsh, Susan Cooper, Mary Austin, and John Muir; but these tensions and ambiguities are with us still.

 

 

  In 2018, Dr. Warner, a professor of English at Yale, gave the Tanner lectures (at UC Berkeley) on infrastructure, ethics, and the environment, with an overarching focus on climate change. His notable works include Publics and Counterpublics; The Trouble with Normal: Sex, Politics, and the Ethics of Queer Life; and The English Literatures of America.