Comparative Literature / Cultural Studies and Media Studies

Hybrid: The session will be held in-person but a few remote presentations may be included.

Kathleen Hudson (Prince George's Community College)

The recent, urgent focus on ecocriticism in the humanities has developed in parallel to increased cultural engagement with folklore studies, particularly as such areas relate to the relationship between human communities and ecosystems. The application of folklore studies in ecocriticism facilitates the incorporation of previously marginalized perspectives and identities in order to speak to a global reality, building on the 'past' while responding to potential, and potentially unstable, 'futures'. This roundtable will discuss how creative responses to and 'regenerations' of the 'folk', folklore, and folk traditions in contemporary literature and media interrogate relationships with the land, encourage ecocritical engagement, and potentially lead to a more restorative, equitable, and empowering understanding of the environment in the age of climate change and migration. It will query how we might, as students of the humanities and as humans, work to further explore this complex intersection, deepening our understanding of folklore traditions, ecocritical theory, and the role both of these play in constructing culturally- and ecologically-responsive identities.

This roundtable will discuss how creative responses to and 'regenerations' of the 'folk', folklore, and folk traditions in contemporary literature and media offer new inroads in literary and cultural ecocriticism. Reconstructions and deconstructions of folklore and folk traditions in creative works interrogate relationships with the land, deepen our engagement with ecocritical theory, and potentially lead to a more restorative, equitable, and empowering understanding of the environment in the age of climate change and migration. The roundtable will discuss how we might examine cultural legacies and traditions in the context of ecocritical theory to better understand and respond to the current moment.