Cli-fi Literature Symposium at University of Florida in February 2016 - “Imagining Climate Change: Science & Fiction in Dialogue”

https://imagining-climate.clas.ufl.edu/spring-2016-colloquium/

“Imagining Climate Change: Science & Fiction in Dialogue”

  February 17–18, 2016

  University of Florida

  Gainesville, FL

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Tentative Schedule of Events

Wednesday, Feb. 17, 2016

1:30–3 PM, Reitz Union Auditorium (map)

“Imagining Climate Change” – Roundtable featuring the guest speakers (Buckell, Chelebourg, Famiglietti, Masson-Delmotte, Quero, VanderMeer)

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Thursday, Feb. 18, 2016

2–5 PM, Smathers Library 100 (Library East) (map)

“Eco-Fiction” – Christian Chelebourg (Université de Lorraine)
Respondent: TBA

“Arctic Rising” – Tobias BuckellRespondent: TBA

“Last Call at the Oasis” – Jay Famiglietti (University of California, Irvine)Respondent: TBA

7:30–10:00 PM, Smathers Library 100 (Library East) (map)

“Imagining Climate Change After Paris” – Valérie Masson-Delmotte (Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l’Environnement / Institut Pierre Simon Laplace, France)Respondent: TBA

“The Future Will No Longer Be What It Once Was” – Yann QueroRespondent: TBA

“After the Anthropocene” – Jeff VandermeerRespondent: TBA

All events are presented in English and are free and open to the public.

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About the guest speakers

Tobias Buckell. Cli-fi author and futurist. His novels and over 50 short stories have been translated into 17 languages and he has been nominated for the Hugo, Nebula, and Prometheus Awards, and the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Science Fiction Author. His Arctic Rising series (now in its third installment) fuses science fiction with espionage thriller, centering on the international jockeying for access to the mineral wealth of the warming Arctic seas and the devastating effects of climate change on island nations.
Christian Chelebourg. Professor of Literature at the Université de Lorraine and Director of the Centre d’Études Littéraires Jean Mourot. A specialist in the literary fantastic and contemporary popular literature, his many publications include Jules Verne, l’œil et ventre (1999), L’Imaginaire littéraire (2000), and Le Surnaturel – Poétique et écriture (2006). His 2012 book Les Écofictions: Mythologies de la fin du monde [Ecofictions: Mythologies of the World’s End] is the first major French-language study of climate fiction.
Jay Famiglietti. Professor of Earth System Science and of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of California, Irvine, and the Senior Water Scientist at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology. The Founding Director of the UC Center for Hydrologic Modeling (UCCHM) at UC Irvine, he was recently appointed by California Governor Jerry Brown to the Santa Ana Regional Water Quality Control Board.
Valérie Masson-Delmotte. Director of Research, Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l’Environnement / Institut Pierre Simon Laplace, Gif-sur-Yvette, France. Named France’s “Woman Scientist of the Year 2013,” she has co-authored numerous scientific publications, was a coordinating lead author of the paleoclimate chapter in IPCC AR5, and has published several books for children and the general public on the subject of climate change.
Yann Quero. French journalist, science fiction novelist and anthologist. His novels Le Procès de l’Homme blanc [The Trial of the White Man, 2005] and L’Avenir de sera plus ce qu’il était [The Future is not What It Was, 2010] deal with a late twenty-first century Earth in crisis, as climate change has destroyed world political and economic orders and invited genocidal solutions. His is editor of the anthology Le Réchauffment climatique et après [Global Warming and After, 2014], the first collection of short fiction on climate change in French.
Jeff VanderMeer. Cli-fi writer, editor, and anthologist. He is the author of more than fifteen books of long fiction and nonfiction and a dozen collections of short fiction, and editor of sixteen fiction anthologies. Winner of the Rhysling Award, British Fantasy Award, BSFA Award, the Locus Award, the World Fantasy Award (3 times), and a finalist for the Nebula Award, the Hugo Award, and others. He is currently working on a book-length study of science fiction’s response to “the slow apocalypse.”

“Imagining Climate Change” is co-sponsored by the France-Florida Research Institute, the Center for African Studies, the Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere, the Department of English, the Florida Climate Institute at the University of Florida, the George A. Smathers Libraries, the Science Fiction Working Group, and the UF Water Institute. Colloquium events are made possible with the support of the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the United States.