Extinctions and Rebellions

On Saturday 16 November 2019, we hosted the BSLS Winter Symposium on the theme of Extinctions and Rebellions.

The Symposium was organised by Dr Anna Burton and Dr Sally Blackburn.

Overview

In 2019, extinction is no longer the province of dinosaurs, the Dodo, or species far away in space and time. As Greta Thunberg argued in her Davos speech earlier this year, and as the ongoing socio-political efforts of the Extinction Rebellion suggest, extinction of the human (as well as the non-human) is an immediate concern and a very possible outcome of the climate crisis, unless significant action is taken by all. With this in mind, the ‘Extinctions and Rebellions’ symposium will think about the varied cultural discourses of extinction, past and present. It will not only be a platform to discuss current environmental and ecological concerns of the Anthropocene in the cultural imagination, but it also offers a space to think about how previous literary and scientific forms have imagined extinction as a process or finality, and how these conversations speak to and could offer a means to think about our current climate crisis. Moreover, we will explore ‘extinction’ and ‘rebellion’ as they pertain to questions of literary form and scientific theory and practice. This one-day event will allow postgraduates, early-career researchers, and academics to think about how the sciences and humanities can work together, inform, and facilitate the “clear language” needed to rebel against human and non-human extinction.

The questions presented by this symposium theme are relevant to all researchers, and we welcome delegates from varied career stages to allow for a diverse discussion. However, ‘Extinctions and Rebellions’ will also focus on how researchers in the earlier phases of their career can start (or continue) to think about the relevance and impacts of their work. The question of ‘Impact’ for REF2021 is one often discussed by established academics, but through a ‘Literature, Science, and Impact’ roundtable, this event will encourage postgraduates and ECRs to discuss the ways in which this field and their work can create changes to thinking and behaviours, and what this can mean for their future research too.

Topics

Non-human Species and Ecological Biodiversity
Climate Crisis, Environmentalism, and the Anthropocene
Imagining the End of the World and/or the Apocalypse
Scientific Extinctions (discourses that have been disproved or are no longer relevant)
Extinct or Dormant Literary Forms (which have a bearing on science)
Transhumanism and/or Posthumanism (ways of extending life and humanity beyond extinction using technology)
Creative writing and Extinction.

Programme

Saturday

9.45 -10.15 – Registration, tea and coffee
10.15 -10.30 – Welcome and Introductory Remarks from Chair and Organisers
10.30 -12.15 – Panels 1 & 2

Panel 1: Extinction and De-extinction

De-extinction and the ethics of modernity - Professor Jerome de Groot, University of Manchester

“Test Tube Tiger: The Thylacine in Species Revivalist Fiction” - Dr Sarah Bezan, Newton International Fellow, The University of Sheffield Animal Studies Research Centre

The Grammar of Extinction - Dr Michael Malay, University of Bristol

The Extinction of the Jabberwock: The Palaeontological Grotesque from the 1880s to the 1940s - Dr Richard Fallon, University College London

Panel 2: Ecology in Children’s and Young Adult Literatures

Environmental crisis and children’s picture books - Dr Emily Alder, Edinburgh Napier University

Weird Ecologies, Precarity and Care in Young Adult Fiction - Dr Chloé Germaine Buckley, Manchester Metropolitan University

Of Moths, Chimney Sweepers, and Silent Springs: Storytelling Environmental Crisis and in the Victorian age and today - Dr Franziska Kohlt, Brasenose College, Oxford

Trauma, Storytelling and the Anthropocene in Cherie Dimaline’s The Marrow Thieves - Beata Gubacsi, University of Liverpool

12.15-13.30 – Lunch and visit to Errant Muse exhibition at VG&M

13.30-15.00 – Panels 3 and 4

Panel 3: Biodiversity and Species Loss

‘Immortal Bird’? The nightingale in decline - Dr Bethan Roberts, University of Liverpool

Beyond Skin: Encounters with the Paradise Parrot - Miranda Cichy, University of Glasgow

Life, Territory, and Care in a Time of Annihilation - Dr Aidan Tynan, Cardiff University

Panel 4: Cli-Fi and Possible Futures

Knowing and not-knowing: the future fate of humankind in Richard Jefferies’ After London and Robert Harris’ The Second Sleep - Dr Adrian Tait, Independent Scholar and Ecocritic

Trees, Entanglement, Extinction: Charismatic Megaflora in Contemporary Fiction - Ida Olsen, PhD Researcher, Ghent University

Technological Consciousness and Duration in H. G. Wells’s The Time Machine and The War of the Worlds - Olly Teregulova, Doctoral Von Hügel scholar, Durham University

15.00-16.00– Impact Roundtable

Professor Georgina Endfield, Professor Jerome de Groot, Dr Greg Lynall, Dr Franziska Kohlt, Mariana Roccia and Jessica Iubini- Hampton (5 mins each, then open questions to floor)

16.00-16.30 – Tea and Coffee

16.30-17.30 – Keynote Dr Sam Solnick

17.30-18.30 – Wine Reception