Northwestern Events Calendar

Apr
17
2019

A New Natural History through Data Visualization - Heather Houser

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When: Wednesday, April 17, 2019
5:00 PM - 6:30 PM CT

Where: University Hall, #201, 1897 Sheridan Road, Evanston, IL 60208 map it

Audience: Faculty/Staff - Student - Public - Post Docs/Docs - Graduate Students

Cost: Free, non-ticketed event. Seating is first come, first served!

Contact: Jill Mannor   (847) 467-3970

Group: Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities

Category: Lectures & Meetings

Description:

A New Natural History through Data Visualization - Heather Houser

Professor Houser will present on digital media projects that repurpose the traditions of classical natural history for conditions of ecological loss. Visualization projects from Audubon, Bryan James, and Maya Lin abstract, fragment, and reconstitute species to propose that designed ecosystems can compensate for degraded or extinct nature. This digital media revives natural history not out of nostalgic yearning but as a way of expressing the ongoing grief that environmental crises incite and that conservation practices engender.

Heather Houser is Associate Professor of English and co-director of Planet Texas 2050 at The University of Texas at Austin. Her research focuses on contemporary fiction and visual culture, environmental humanities, and science and technology studies. She is the author of Ecosickness in Contemporary U.S. Fiction: Environment and Affect (2014) and Environmental Culture of the Infowhelm (forthcoming), as well as essays in varied publications. She's currently a Visiting Fellow at the Tanner Humanities Center at the University of Utah.

Presented by Northwestern's Department of English, the American Cultures Colloquium, and the Environmental Humanities Research Workshop of the Kaplan Humanities Institute.

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