The Critical Perspectives series aims to bring the analytical insights of scholars, theorists, and critics working in literary and cultural studies into our English classrooms and broader academic community at UNC Asheville. A complement to our Visiting Writers series, Critical Perspectives draws no hard line between “creative” and “critical” work but gives focus to speakers who model contemporary modes of analysis in literary fields. Series topics correspond with and enrich current classes offered by English faculty, and collectively range across various approaches and subjects (historical, cultural, theoretical, formal) in contemporary literary studies.
Spring 2024
Becoming Beholden: Floods, Fires, and Acts of Witness
What does it mean to be beholden to a dying world?
In her talk on March 28 at 7 p.m. in Alumni Hall of Highsmith Student Union, Shannon Gayk, Ph.D. will explore how premodern accounts of biblical flood and fire probe the ethics of seeing ecological catastrophe and responding to the suffering it generates.
Gayk is an associate professor of English and director of Creative Ecologies for Just Futures at University of Indiana-Bloomington.
This lecture, part of the English Department’s Critical Perspectives series, is free and open to the public.