Agenda

Paola Spinozzi, University of Ferrara, on Ecological Minds for Sustainable Wellbeing

The humanities can foster to the ecological transition by raising awareness that all living organisms are interdependent. Ecocriticism studies nature poetry, climate fiction and ecotheatre
as forms of knowledge and representation of the environment; Sustainability Studies explore how the notions of risk and disaster, preparedness and resilience, adaptation and regeneration can help us envision viable futures; Utopian Studies stress the value of speculative methods thriving on extrapolation, cognitive estrangement, and forecast. Blending ecological, sustainable, and utopian approaches, we can develop ecological minds and effect change.

The lecture will include a presentation of the PhD programme in Environmental Sustainability & Wellbeing at the Università degli Studi di Ferrara.

Paola Spinozzi is Professor of English Literature at the University of Ferrara. Her research focuses on theories of the ecological humanities and ecocriticism, sustainability studies, and
utopian studies; post/apocalyptic and climate fiction, nature poetry and eco-theatre; representations of (un)sustainable societies, anthropogenic phenomena, resilience, adaptation,
regeneration (Cultures of Sustainability and Wellbeing: Theories, Histories, Policies, ed. with M. Mazzanti, 2018). She is the coordinator of the International PhD programme in Environmental Sustainability and Wellbeing and the co-coordinator of the Routes towards Sustainability International Network. She
has published on utopia as a genre in relation to art and aesthetics, imperialism, racism, Darwinism, and the post/apocalypse (Histoire transnationale de l’utopie littéraire et de l’utopisme, ed. with V. Fortunati and R. Trousson, 2008); literary representations of scientific theories (Discourses and Narrations in the Biosciences, ed. with B. Hurwitz, 2011); literature and the visual arts (Sopra il reale. Osmosi interartistiche nel Preraffaellitismo e nel Simbolismo inglese, 2005; The Germ. Origins and Progenies of Pre-Raphaelite Interart Aesthetics, with E. Bizzotto, 2012).

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