Dr. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen will explore how The Book of Genesis narrates a powerful story of how a family conserved a living archive of the world during climate catastrophe.

ABOUT THIS TALK

The tale of Noah and his ark is a familiar story, but it is stranger than the diminished version we too often tell to children when we want to entertain them, or to ourselves when we want to imagine how refuge from a world in upheaval might operate. Ranging over the permutations of the ark from ancient Babylon to modern science fiction, this talk will examine the invitation to the imagination and to creating a more capacious sense of refuge the story has long offered. Cohen, a pioneer of the environmental humanities, is the author of many books and articles and the Dean of the Humanities at Arizona State University.

Presented by the Medieval Studies Institute and the IU Department of English, this event is part of Themester 2021’s focus on RESILIENCE.