CoHearence

Produced in collaboration with the editorial collective of the student-run journal UnderCurrents (www.yorku.ca/currents), this episode features a roundtable discussion with Peter Hobbs, Brent Ingram, and Cate Sandilands. The discussion coincides with the release of UnderCurrents Vol. 19, "From Queer/Nature to Queer Ecologies," which celebrates 20 years since the publication of UnderCurrents Vol. 6 "Queer/Nature." The participants discuss the pasts, presents, and futures of queer ecological scholarship in conversation with this episode's co-producer, Darren Patrick.

A preview of a full length companion episode to UnderCurrents Volume 19: From Queer/Nature to Queer Ecologies: Celebrating 20 Years of Scholarship and Creativity: http://currents.journals.yorku.ca/

In June of 2010, government leaders from 20 of the world’s richest countries met in Toronto to discuss the global economy and the world financial system. People from across Canada and around the world converged in the streets of downtown Toronto to protest the G20’s focus on increasing austerity measures and cuts to social programming as a way to curtail international debt and to keep power in the hands of the wealthy.

In the second part of CoHearence’s look at the 2011 conference, Green Words/Green Worlds: Environmental Literatures and Politics in Canada, we continue our investigation of the relationship between the cultivation of an environmental reading (and writing) practice and engaged eco-politics.

In the fall of 2011, ecocritics, writers, and poets from across Canada attended a conference at the Gladstone hotel in Toronto. This conference, entitled “Green Words/Green Worlds: Environmental Literatures and Politics in Canada,” focused on the relationship between the cultivation of an environmental reading (and writing) practice and engaged eco-politics.

The title of this episode, Resistance for Breakfast: Hegemony, Arts, and Environment, is a playful departure from Peter Schumann’s words, and suggests that, perhaps, we could all use a little more resistance in our diet. We will investigate how hegemonic power manifests itself in environmental art and how art practices can also expose and challenge such power.

As we discussed in part one of this two part series, melancholy and mourning permeate environmental thought and colour the way that we approach activism. In this episode, our focus shifts from the history of melancholy and mourning to specific examples of mourning in environmental and social justice activism.

Discussions about melancholy and mourning pop up in a wide range of disciplines. For scholars in environmental studies, understanding these concepts is important as we try to figure out how to deal with the unprecedented environmental losses of our time. In the first part of this two-part episode of CoHearence, we explore the history of melancholia and why it’s important for thinking about environmental issues.