This public square is an invitation to think together, using insights drawn from Queer Theory, to consider how we might respond to our unfolding climate emergency. In the anthropogenic age, how and why might we imagine ecological relationships in other, perhaps “queerer” terms? How do we resist the tendency to romanticize ecological relationships and instead, confront the inevitability of ecological breakdown head on while still allowing ourselves the pleasure of imagining the world we’d like to live in? How do we move from the theoretical to the material and incorporate queer ecological thinking into our work as artists and designers? The workshop will include opportunities for written reflection, drawing, and/or making of other kinds as participants think through how the answers to these questions might apply to their own work. Bring any materials you think it might be useful to have on hand!

This event will be livestreamed on the Index Public Square (our homepage), but you can register to join on Zoom.

Jennifer Ansley (they/them) has a Ph.D. in English with specialization in Queer and Feminist Cultural Studies; 19th and 20th c. Literary History; and Writing Pedagogy. After 20 years working in the academic humanities, they left their faculty position at Duke University to pursue a master’s degree in Landscape Architecture at the Rhode Island School of Design. Their current research is focused on soil, plastic, grief, and breakdown (in the many senses of the word) and attempts to spatialize and materialize the work they began in their early career to understand how Queer Studies might help us reconsider human and non-human relations of care, ethics, justice.

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