Dr. Nathan Hensley’s lecture was titled, Action After Nature: Climate Crisis & The Force of Literature. The lecture focuses on the ecologically collapsing world and the power of literature in regards to addressing it. At the beginning, Dr. Hensley outlined his talk by entertaining us with statistics and brief stories in relation to environmental losses of specific species, unbelievable natural disasters, and changes in weather patterns. He then went on to tell us how there are often much deeper meanings behind what seems like shallow writing.
At first Dr. Hensley’s lecture topic went right over my head (maybe that was a metaphor in itself); it seemed like a stretch to compare our global environmental issues to 200-year-old literature. Quite honestly, I was not sure where he was going to go with it. However, I was proved wrong about halfway through the lecture when I started to understand the parallels between this old literature and the profound environmental issues we face today.
He specifically used Lewis Carroll’s, “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” to explain that authors have long been using a specific language that help people communicate through different realities. Dr. Hensley explained that Alice traveled through two very different worlds where she tried to implement specific actions into both. She was confused when she would not be able to understand things in one world but was able to understand in the other. Dr. Hensley suggests that this is similar to how we are on the verge between two different “worlds” in the environmental realm. We are trying to communicate specific things in the other world and it is not being heard or understood.
Overall, I though Dr. Hensley’s lecture was a interesting (but complicated) metaphor regarding the climate crisis however I am definitely not sure that it is the answer to the crisis. The idea that we need to change our actions because we are entering a new “world” of climate change and crisis is definitely agreeable but one of the questions asked in the lecture challenged the ability for literature to be implemented as a response to the actual crisis. Dr. Hensley himself was not 100% sure but brought up teamwork, collaboration, and collectivism- all things that I agree can help but definitely cannot spearhead the issue itself.
Collectivism and teamwork is a factor that should be exploited but along with many other solutions. If citizens can work together much can be achieved but just simply “working together” does not achieve much without a plan. The statistics Dr. Hensley presented are a significant start in understanding how to put together a form of marketing to advertise a plan for this crisis. People often need evidence and facts to force a change that some “don’t believe” or do not want to take the time to deal with. In my opinion, old literature is not going to be the evidence people need to force change.
A broader point I took from Dr. Hensley’s lecture (and I’m sure many other students did too) was the pure influence of literature. History has seen numerous pieces of writing that have shaken up the status quo and has helped change.