Environmental Humanities Seminar with Clara Wilch

Clara Wilch is an interdisciplinary environmental studies scholar who researches performance-based negotiations of climate change with an interest in infrastructural and affective forms of climate mitigation and adaptation. Her current book project focuses on twentieth- and twenty-first-century performances that stage ecologically influential encounters between humans and ice (“icescapes”) especially icescapes set in the predominately Inuit territory of Nunavut, Canada. This project examines artistic practices, paleoclimatic research, dogsledding, and political demonstrations and attends to relationships among socioenvironmental change, settler colonialism, gender, and capitalism. Before pursuing her doctorate, her professional experiences included biological research, theater production, and natural-process farming; through scholarship and creative collaborations, she strives to interweave methods from the humanities, arts, and sciences to help reconceive and address vital concerns of environmental and multispecies justice. Her writing has appeared in TDR, Performance Research, and Theatre Journal. She holds a PhD in Theater and Performance Studies from the University of California, Los Angeles and a BA in Biology from Occidental College. Robin Bernstein is Dillon Professor of American History and Professor of African and African American Studies and of Studies of Women, Gender, & Sexuality at Harvard University.