Haunted Shores online seminar series
5pm (UK time) 30 October 2024
Online (Zoom)
We are very pleased to invite you to the Haunted Shores network’s first in an ongoing seminar series. For this first seminar, we’re delighted to be joined by Dr Steve Mentz, who will be discussing flooding and Shakespeare, in a talk titled:
“A naughty night to swim in”: Water and Alienation in King Lear and The Winter’s Tale
Abstract: As survivors of flooding from Nepal to North Carolina have been painfully learning, an excess of water creates environmental hostility in the Anthropocene. While some of today’s flooding may be unprecedented, due to atmospheric warming, floodwaters course through literary history. Two Shakespearean examples – the flooded hovel in King Lear, and the violent surf on the sea-coast of Bohemia in The Winter’s Tale – clarify the environmental stakes of hostile watery spaces. These two scenes help articulate a poetics of swimming that may be especially valuable during our own storm-tossed era.
Please register for the seminar here.
For any questions, please email hauntedshoresinfo@gmail.com
We look forward to seeing you there!
HS
Bio: Steve Mentz is Professor of English at St. John’s University in New York City. He is the author of numerous books and articles on the Blue Humanities, Shakespeare studies, and ecocriticism. His most recent publications include the creative-critical book of poems, Sailing without Ahab (2024), the essay collation, co-edited with Nic Helms, Water and Cognition in Early Modern English Literature (2024), and An Introduction to the Blue Humanities (2023). Current projects include a book on storms and the poetics of swimming. He blogs at stevementz.com and (still) tweets @stevermentz.