Ben Jamieson Stanley (they/them), Assistant Professor of English at the University of Delaware, will deliver an invited guest lecture at Clark University related to their recently published book: Precarious Eating: Narrating Environmental Harm.
While “climate fiction” has become privileged in the Global North, Global South representations more often trace environmental precarity to its roots in colonization and globalized capitalism. This talk situates fisheries and foraging as a point of entry to South Africa’s Western Cape, where bustling culinary and environmental tourism coincide with hunger and stratification. Connecting Zakes Mda’s 2005 novel The Whale Caller to contemporary cookbooks and restaurants, the talk follows the changing meanings of endangered mollusks such as abalone: from their role in indigenous foodways, to the 1990s “abalone wars,” and to the appropriation of “indigenous foods” in eco-gastronomic cuisine.
Admission is free and open to the public, and lunch will be provided. Guests are encouraged to arrive at 11:45 am for refreshments.
Ben Jamieson Stanley (they/them) is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Delaware, where they are directing the launch of a new Center for Environmental Humanities. Ben’s research focuses on how we narrate and understand relationships among globalization, empire, and environmental precarity. Professor Stanley has also published on topics such as climate fiction, veganism, botanical gardens as tools of both empire and resistance, and energy systems in Afrofuturist film. Their work can be found in journals such as ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and the Environment, The Global South, and Matatu: Journal for African Culture and Society. Professor Stanley is working on a second book tentatively titled Mobilities: Movement and Energy in a Changing South Africa, which brings together questions of energy transition, gender and sexuality, and transit justice.