Witness to Change: Elizabeth Rush's Rising

Wednesday, January 11, 2023 - 6:00pm
Gallier House
1132 Royal Street
New Orleans, LA 70115
The Gallier Gatherings Lecture Series hosts Witness to Change: Community Conversations on Coastal Impacts First discussion: Wednesday, January 11th, 2023 at 6pm, Elizabeth Rush’s Rising (2018) with Dr. Christopher Schaberg, environmental humanities scholar. The Hermann-Grima + Gallier Historic Houses and the Gallier Gatherings Lecture Series is pleased to host the LEH Currents reading and discussion series, Witness to Change: Community Conversations of Coastal Impacts in the Winter and Spring of 2023! The book to be discussed on January 11th is Elizabeth Rush’s Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore. The conversation will take place at the Gallier House (1132 Royal Street, New Orleans) and be led by environmental humanities scholar Dr. Christopher Schaberg, Dorothy Harrell Brown Distinguished Professor of English at Loyola University New Orleans. Registration is free and includes a copy of Rising. Participants may register for multiple LEH Currents events: please use the following link to find out more about the other nights: https://fb.me/e/3Ejb8UZ0g Space and available books are capped at 20 for each discussion, so please be sure to register ASAP. After you complete your registration on Eventbrite, follow the emailed instructions to activate your registration and receive your free book. If registration is full, interested participants may also sign up for the waitlist—any registrations not activated by a week before the discussion night will be released to the waitlist at that time, and any uncollected books will be distributed on a first-come-first-served basis after that point. About the book and the author: Elizabeth Rush, Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore. Milkweed Editions, 2018. With every passing day, and every record-breaking hurricane, it grows clearer that climate change is neither imagined nor distant—and that rising seas are transforming the coastline of the United States in irrevocable ways. In Rising, Elizabeth Rush guides readers through some of the places where this change has been most dramatic, from the Gulf Coast to Miami, and from New York City to the Bay Area. For many of the plants, animals, and humans in these places, the options are stark: retreat or perish in place. Weaving firsthand testimonials from those facing this choice—a Staten Islander who lost her father during Sandy, the remaining holdouts of a Native American community on a drowning Isle de Jean Charles, a neighborhood in Pensacola settled by escaped slaves hundreds of years ago—with profiles of wildlife biologists, activists, and other members of these vulnerable communities, Rising privileges the voices of those too often kept at the margins. Elizabeth Rush is a visiting lecturer in English at Brown University and the 2019 National Science Foundation’s Antarctic Artist and Writer. Her book, Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore, won the National Outdoor Book Award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2018. About Dr. Christopher Schaberg: Christopher Schaberg—Dorothy Harrell Brown Distinguished Professor of English at Loyola University New Orleans—is the author of eight books on contemporary American literature, the culture of air travel, and environmental awareness. His new book, out in March 2023, is Fly-Fishing. About Witness to Change: Community Conversations on Coastal Impacts: Every human being has a relationship with water. It forms our bodies, drives our commerce, and defines many of the places we live. Since civilization began, people have attempted to control water—keeping it close, but in its place. But what happens when the relationship with water changes? How do we react when the sea rises, when land is lost, and when flooding affects our homes? Witness to Change: Community Conversations on Coastal Impacts offers a place to have these conversations. This adult reading and discussion program, led by scholars, offers participants the opportunity to learn more about issues arising from the complex and changing human relationship with water. See how these issues are both local and global and join your neighbors in an exploration of how others are adapting to our changing world. Currents is a program of the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities and is made possible by the State of Louisiana.

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