Sustaining Hope: From History to Futurity in a Time of Climate Crisis in Canada

Nature has always been at the core of Canadian artistic production. Over the generations, however, creative responses to the environment have changed dramatically. As the climate crisis has emerged, artists have become less likely to fear the land or render it sentimentally, and more apt to either imagine an altered state of environmental degradation or speculate on an alternative future. In her short article “Embracing Water Through Poetry,” Erica Hiroku Isomura argues that “art and activism are necessary to sustain hope, especially in hard time like the present.” The task of this lecture is to attend to thinkers, artists, and writers who have formulated a cultural politics out of the environment’s disruptive power.

Taking a climate justice approach, I will examine a series of poetic and artistic responses to deforestation, climate change, petroculture, and genetic modification. I will begin by tracing the history of environmental representations in Canadian arts and letters and end with an exploration of forms of speculative futurism that map out post-apocalyptic connections. This lecture will make room for us to explore these works together. No previous knowledge of the texts or contexts is required.