Scholarcast Series 11: Irish Studies and the Environmental Humanities

Every reader and scholar of Irish literature is familiar with its extensive genealogy of nature writing, and a 'sense of place' found across a great variety of texts. While not unique to Ireland such a rich heritage has produced some of the most enduring and exciting literary and cultural criticisms. However, given our contemporary concerns with environmental issues, of which climate change is one, literary and cultural narratives need to be re-read and re-energized to help us find a language that speaks to current existential anxieties. This series hopes to produce some of the conceptual pathways that might bridge the narrative of climate change offered by climate scientists and economists, and the humanities' deep engagement with the idea of narrative as something that allows conceptual leaps, produces historical, cultural and somatic effects.