This interdisciplinary roundtable will explore how scholars in the environmental humanities are using the concept of “slow violence” to reimagine timescales of disasters in history, whether ancient or contemporary. First formulated in literary and postcolonial studies, slow violence illuminates social and environmental destruction that occurs beyond an initial cause of violence and that time conditions us not to see. The roundtable will consider how historians and social scientists are translating this concept to problematize tidy narratives of cause and effect around disasters. Participants will also consider new forms of storytelling that include multiple voices of environmentalism in the historical record.

The roundtable will feature comments from:

Nikhil Deb, Ph.D. (Murray State University)

Claire Mayo, Doctoral Candidate (University of Tennessee, Knoxville)

Ruth Mostern, Ph.D. (University of Pittsburgh)

Rob Nixon, Ph.D. (Princeton University)

Raja Swamy, Ph.D. (University of Tennessee, Knoxville)

After the comments and discussion, attendees will be able to submit questions for a Q&A.

Attendees must register beforehand at the following site: https://tennessee.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_iM6DgIQ-QWCDnstGGqnAAA.