“After the Clearing: Toni Morrison’s Ecopoetics – Sharon Holland and Sarah Jane Cervenak In Conversation”

Sharon Holland is Townsand Ludington Distinguished Professor of American Studies at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, and the author of three books: Raising the Dead: Readings of Death and (Black) Subjectivity, The Erotic Life of Racism, and an other: a black feminist consideration of animal life, and the co-author, with Tiyana Miles, of Crossing Waters, Crossing Worlds: The African Diaspora in Indian Country. She was the 2022-23 President of the American Studies Association.

Sarah Jane Cervenak is professor of women’s, gender and sexuality studies and African American studies at the University of North Carolina Greensboro. She is the author of Wandering: Philosophical Performances of Racial and Sexual Freedom, and Black Gathering: Art, Ecology, Ungiven Life. She is the editor, with J. Kameron Carter, of the book series The Black Outdoors: Innovations in the Poetics of Study.

This event is part of the 2024-25 Tucker-Boatwright Festival of Literature and the Arts, “The Nature of Representation,” hosted by the English Department, and it is aligned with the Humanities Center theme question, “How (and why) do we represent nature.” The UR Humanities Centeroffers public events as well as intensive research and community-building programs, guided by our mission to collate and amplify humanities study. Please subscribe to the Humanities Newsletter to keep up with Center activities, and follow URHumanities on Instagram.