2025 Humanities Symposium: Cry of the Earth, Cry of the Poor
Keynote Address
by Amitav Ghosh
Thursday, March 13, 2025
McGuire Hall
Andrew White Student Center
6:30 PM
In The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable, a work of non-fiction, acclaimed novelist Amitav Ghosh explores the climate crisis through multiple disciplinary lenses. In three short chapters: Stories, History, and Politics, which also address art, colonialism, and Laudato Si among other topics, Ghosh interweaves reflections on how we are constrained by our current modes of thinking and how we might find a way forward.
Amitav Ghosh was born in Calcutta and grew up in India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. He studied in Delhi, Oxford and Alexandria. Amitav Ghosh’s work has been translated into more than thirty languages and he has served on the juries of the Locarno and Venice film festivals. The Great Derangement was given the inaugural Utah Award for the Environmental Humanities in 2018. His essays have appeared in The New Yorker, The New Republic and The New York Times. Amitav Ghosh holds four Lifetime Achievement awards and five honorary doctorates. In 2007 he was awarded the Padma Shri, one of India’s highest honors, by the President of India. In 2010 he was a joint winner, along with Margaret Atwood, of a Dan David prize, and 2011 he was awarded the Grand Prix of the Blue Metropolis festival in Montreal. In 2018 the Jnanpith Award, India’s highest literary honor, was conferred on Amitav Ghosh. He was the first English-language writer to receive the award. In 2019 Foreign Policy magazine named him one of the most important global thinkers of the preceding decade. In 2024, he was awarded the Erasmus Prize by the Praemium Erasmianum Foundation. Headshot credit: Mathieu Genon.
This event will be captioned. If you require additional accommodations, please contact Disability and Accessibility Services at das@loyola.edu.
Faculty Teaching Seminar
Faculty members are invited to attend this year's Humanities Symposium Fall Teaching seminar on Wednesday February 5 from 12:00 to 1:00 PM in College Center Conference Room 105. This seminar will provide information about the Humanities Student-Faculty Colloquia and will also offer suggestions and resources for teaching this year's text.
Faculty from three different departments will share ideas about how to incorporate this text into your spring courses. Further details to follow.
Student-Faculty Colloquia
Wednesday, March 12 and Thursday, March 13, 2025
McManus Theatre
Faculty from all disciplines are invited to bring their classes to our student-faculty colloquia March 12 and March 13.
Details about Faculty registration will follow.
For more information about the 2025 Humanities Symposium events, please email Billy Friebele, associate professor of Visual and Performing Arts, at wefriebele@loyola.edu.
Related events:
O Rio Negro São As Pessoas -
Environmental Film Screening & Discussion with Filmmakers
Monday, February 3
Loyola Notre Dame Library Auditorium
6:00 PM
followed by a talkback with some of the film's creators
The Anavilhanas National Park, in the Rio Negro Amazon, is the environment for presenting characters living in the tenuous orbit between the city Manaus and riverside communities on the banks of this historic river. The film explores the contemporary meaning of being at and growing up by the banks of a river with the power of Rio Negro, submerged in a dense forest and surrounded by global elements of today; the need to leave, the forgotten desire to return, the choice to stay, the immensity and the time of the river, form an intuitive and imaginary narrative set to suggest deeply local stories that serve the reflection on human life.
Daniel Deudney - Modern Masters Reading Series
Thursday February 13
McGuire Hall
Andrew White Student Center
6:30 PM
Daniel H. Deudney teaches political science, international relations and political theory at Johns Hopkins University. He holds a BA in political science and philosophy from Yale University, a MPA in science, technology, and public policy from George Washington University, and a PhD in political science from Princeton University. His areas of research are general international relations theory, international political theory and republicanism, and contemporary global issues (nuclear, outer space, environment, and energy). His publications include Renewable Energy (Norton, 1983), co-author; and Contested Grounds: Conflict and Security in the New Global Environmental Politics (SUNY, 1998), co-editor.
Toxic Tour of Curtis Bay and Community-Led and Controlled Development
Friday, February 21
9:00 AM - 3:00 PM
(Bus transportation will be provided)
Students will have an opportunity to see, to hear, to witness the environmental violence of 77+ stationary toxic facilities in Curtis Bay. Due to the cumulative impact of stationary toxic facilities, this community has some of the highest cases of respiratory illnesses in the entire country.
We will go back in time to 2012 when youth from the community heard about a plan to build the nation's largest trash to energy incinerator a mile from their high school. This youth group has grown from stopping one polluting industry to now thinking about longer term community-led and controlled development.
9:00 am - Start at the Curtis Bay Recreation Center - 1630 Filbert Street, Baltimore
MD
10:00 am - Walk to where we can see the CSX terminal and coal piled up
11:00 am - Fairfield and Wagner's Point where Shashawnda Campbell (SBCLT organizer)
will talk through early days of free your voice and the Incinerator struggle
12:30 pm - Lunch @ SBCLT office 145 W. Ostend Street
1:30 pm - Hear about the Land Trust homes and visit the first passive home
registration details to follow
Roundtable on Environmental Justice with Nicole Fabricant
Monday, February 24
Humanities Café (main floor of the Humanities Building)
6:00-7:00 PM
Monday following the toxic tour, Loyola students will have an opportunity to plug into roundtable discussions about the ongoing work in South Baltimore. One table will focus on legislation and policy, another will focus on alternative housing and the third table will focus on environmental justice and youth education. There will be popular education and activities to get them thinking about their own interests and talents and how this can feed into the grassroots organizing work.
Nicole Fabricant is Professor of Anthropology at Towson University in Maryland. She
teaches courses on resource extraction, environmental justice, and the climate crisis.
Her most recent book, Fighting to Breathe Race, Toxicity and the Rise of Youth Activism in Baltimore (University of California Press 2022) looks at the cumulative impacts of industrial
stationary toxic facilities in South Baltimore, Maryland. The book follows a dynamic
and creative group of high school students who decided to fight back against the race-
and class-based health disparities and inequality of industrial expansion.
Event Information
Theme: Cry of the Earth, Cry of the Poor
Keynote Address:
Thursday, March 13, 2025
McGuire Hall
6:30 p.m.
Text: The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable by Amitav Ghosh
Questions? Please contact Billy Friebele, Associate professor, Visual and Performing Arts
wefriebele@loyola.edu