October 1, 2013
Rob Nixon, the Rachel Carson and Elizabeth Ritzmann Professor of English and a faculty affiliate of the Nelson Institute, will serve as keynote speaker at Collecting the Future: Museums, Communities and Climate Change, a workshop co-convened by the American Museum of Natural History and the National Museum of Australia.
The event, held Oct. 2-4 at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, will bring together museum curators, educators, historians and anthropologists from around the world to explore how museums can move beyond science education to address the physical, social, cultural and emotional dimensions of climate change.
For example, how can museums contribute to building communities capable of engaging and responding to global climate change? And how can museums use their collections, interpretations and traditions of encouraging debate to help people reimagine and reshape their lives in a profoundly altered world?
Nixon’s Oct. 4 address is titled This Brief Multitude: The Anthropocene and Environmental Justice. He will explore both the convergent story of the “Anthropocene” and the divergent story of widening inequalities, in wealth, in access to environmental resources, and in environmental impacts.
Nixon’s most recent book, “Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor,” which has received four major prizes, explores similar topics.