Irish Anthropocene Literature, Climate Change, Sovereignty
Thursday 22 October 2026, 12 midday - 1.30pm
Seminar Room 00.063, Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities
All welcome
This talk introduces the book Irish Anthropocene: Literature, Climate Change, Sovereignty (Syracuse University Press, 2026), in which Malcolm Sen traces the ways in which contemporary Irish literature responds to climate breakdown and engages with the entangled relations between ecology, economy, and politics. Irish writers not only critique the association of greenness with Ireland and the corporatization of sustainability discourses, they also illuminate the acute challenges that the climate crisis poses to political, social, and cultural forms in addition to ecosystems.
Malcolm Sen is Malcolm Sen is Associate Professor in the Department of English at UMass Amherst. He is the Director of Environmental Humanities, and co-PI of the Anthropocene Lab and The Art(e)Facts Project. He is the author of Irish Anthropocene: Literature, Sovereignty, Climate Change (New York: Syracuse University Press, 2026) and the Series Editor of “The COMMONwealth Project” forthcoming from the University of Massachusetts in Fall 2026. Sen is the editor of The History of Irish Literature and the Environment (Cambridge University Press, 2022), and co-editor of Postcolonial Studies and Challenges of the New Millennium (Routledge, 2016), and Race in Irish Literature and Culture (Cambridge University Press, 2024). His recent essays include, “Climate Wars in the Anthropocene: Migrant Lives and Militarized Statehood,” in Sharae Deckard, Kerstin Oloff, and Treasa DeLoughrey, Eds., Routledge Companion on Literature and the Environment (London: Routledge, 2026); “The Poetics of Identity in Contemporary Ireland,” in Eric Falci, Eds., The Cambridge History of Irish Poetry (Cambridge University Press, 2026) and “Horizon” in Laura Doyle and Simon Gikandi, Eds., Decolonial Reconstellations 2 Vols. (London: Routledge, 2025).
