Human Trafficking, the Opium Wars and the Climate Crisis: Amitav Ghosh’s Historical Fiction. Conference/Lecture Friday, November 12, 2021 The event started -1049 days agoMultiday event - 0 days 3:30 PM 4:30 PM Morton Hall 295 RELCAS Presentation Human Trafficking, the Opium Wars and the Climate Crisis: Amitav Ghosh’s Historical Fiction. Dr. David St. John, Lecturer Department of English ABOUT: In this interdisciplinary RELACS symposium, I combine sociological research conducted on-site at the Po Leung Kuk museum/school in 2019, a Hong Kong based institution devoted to rehabilitating current survivors of human trafficking in East Asia and documenting its history, with an environmental reading of Amitav Ghosh’s Ibis trilogy, the novels Sea of Poppies, River of Smoke, and Flood of Fire. I apply pressure to the socio-political apparatuses of British imperialism and consider the agency of the more-than-human realm during the time period of the Opium Wars. This theoretical stretching allows for literature to emerge as a place where “natural” and “human” histories intertwine, allowing critics to see the correlative and causal relationships between environmental catastrophe and anthropocentric violence. Amitav Ghosh’s Ibis Trilogy locates the human trafficking of slaves and sepoys during the Anglo-Chinese war as a critical ancestor of contemporary globalization. These novels and his non-fiction treatise The Great Derangement underscore the importance of seeing global climate change as not only a result of homo sapien activity at large, but as a conglomeration of regional racist interruptions, local sites of uneven development, and the illicit traffic of living matter. This presentation argues that Ghosh’s historical fiction serves as a vital entry point for discussions about how the legacy of slavery and the continued violence of human trafficking is inextricable from discussions about environmental degradation and the Anthropocene. JOIN ZOOM HERE. Details Category Conference/Lecture department College of Arts Humanities and Social Sciences, English Audience Students, Faculty and Staff, Alumni Contact CAHS Office of the Dean This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. Venue Morton Hall1310 Ben Graves DriveHuntsville, AL 35899View map More Dates SHARE