I’m chairing an online symposium for the Literary Education Lab in collaboration with Stella.
Speakers:
Ellen van Neerven
Professor Tony Birch
Professor Kathryn Yusoff
Here’s the Blurb: Climate change has been identified as the major crisis facing the world, and a core issue for young people: May and October 2021 saw the third year of School Strike 4 Climate marches across Australia and globally, with many secondary school students walking out of schools in an urgent call for governmental action on climate change. Addressing the climate crisis in education requires interdisciplinary approaches that reflect the urgency and scope and scale of the situation. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander narratives provide new perspectives on interactions with Country, climate change, facilitating reader engagement with Indigenous knowledges and perspectives. While Indigenous writers’ contributions to understandings of climate are well documented, and the power of story to impact on understandings of significant environmental issues is well established, First Nations writing remains significantly underrepresented in Australia’s secondary school and tertiary curricula.
This innovative symposium brings into dialogue two of Australia’s most celebrated First Nations authors and a leading geo-philosopher to consider the power of interdisciplinary collaboration centred on the literary arts in our rapidly changing climate.
Presentations will be online, scheduled 7.00pm to 8.30pm Australian Eastern Daylight Time (AEDT) 20 January 2022.
Sign up here: https://artsfront.com/event/167997-reading-climate-indigenous-literatures-school-english-and-sustainable-futures-symposium