Description:

"Take Shelter" film screening and discussion. Presented by the Environmental Humanities Research Workshop of the Kaplan Humanities Institute.

Pizza will be served! RSVP to Adam Syvertsen.

Prescreening reading (optional): "'There's a Storm Coming!': Reading the Threat of Climate Change in Jeff Nichols's Take Shelter" by Agnes Woolley. PDF is available on the Environmental Humanities Research Workshop web page.

"Take Shelter" (2011, directed by Jeff Nichols): Curtis LaForche lives in a small Ohio town with his wife Samantha and six-year-old daughter Hannah, who is deaf. Money is tight, and navigating Hannah's healthcare and special needs education is a constant struggle. Despite that, Curtis and Samantha are very much in love and their family is a happy one. Then Curtis begins having terrifying dreams about an encroaching, apocalyptic storm. He chooses to keep the disturbance to himself, channeling his anxiety into the obsessive building of a storm shelter in their backyard. But the resulting strain on his marriage and tension within the community doesn't compare to Curtis' private fear of what his dreams may truly signify. Faced with the proposition that his disturbing visions signal disaster of one kind or another, Curtis confides in Samantha, testing the power of their bond against the highest possible stakes. -- (C) Sony Classics 

The Environmental Humanities Research Workshop of the Kaplan Humanities Institute fosters a community of scholars at Northwestern and in the Chicago area who are interested in what we have broadly termed the environmental humanities. Workshop participants share an interest in questions of nature, science, ethics, aesthetics, environmental policy, and the shifting relationships between the human and the non-human, as well as in refining our understanding of what “the environmental humanities” comprises. The Environmental Humanities Research Workshop hosts informal discussions about provocative pieces of scholarship as well as works-in-progress, and organizes public talks by established scholars whose work has helped define and expand humanistic approaches to environmental issues.

To join the Environmental Humanities listserv, please email:
Corey Byrnes (corey.byrnes@northwestern.edu), Keith Woodhouse (keith.woodhouse@northwestern.edu), or Sarah Dimick (sarah.dimick@northwestern.edu).