On Wednesday, 11 May 2016, Associate Professor Kristin J. Jacobson (Stockton University) will give a talk entitled:
“Desiring Natures: Extreme Adventure and the Environment”
The talk will take place in Room 308 (upstairs) at 19:15 pm.
Below you can find the speaker’s bio and paper abstract.
====================
Brief Abstract
The Jia Tsuo La Pass in Tibet—17,226 feet—marks the highest I have traveled without actually leaving the ground. Amazingly, I was still over 10,000 feet short of the highest point on earth. However, the American in me was not surprised that you could ride a tour bus to the top of the pass. At the peak of my Tibetan travels I reflected on what desires pushed me to catch a glimpse of Everest via an adventurous, if not necessarily sustainable, tour. I wondered if Jon Krakauer had not been one of the climbers to summit, survive, and tell the tale, would I have found myself experiencing my own modified extreme adventure? The attempt to understand the desires related to fanatical, risky acts like climbing to 29,028 feet and their environmental impact lies at the heart of these extreme adventure stories and my current research that defines and examines this extreme edge of American nature writing. My presentation will have two parts: first I will briefly describe the distinctive generic contours of these perilous outdoor adventure tales—what I term “adrenaline narratives”—and then I will consider how they promote and hinder ecological sustainability and the resulting insights they provide into what Lawrence Buell calls the “American environmental imagination.”
Short Bio
KRISTIN J. JACOBSON (Ph.D.,The Pennsylvania State University) grew up in rural Wisconsin and attended Carthage College in Kenosha, WI (B.A.) and then the University of Colorado-Boulder (M.A.). She joined the Stockton University’s faculty in 2005. Currently, Jacobson is an associate professor of American literature. She teaches a variety of courses in American literature, American Studies, and Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies. Incorporating feminist geography and literary analysis, her book, Neodomestic American Fiction (Ohio State University Press, 2010), investigates late twentieth-century and early twenty-first-century manifestations of “domestic fiction.” She has published articles in Genre, Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature and Legacy. Her current book project identifies a new genre of travel and environmental literature: the American adrenaline narrative. The project defines and then examines the genre’s significant tropes from an ecofeminist perspective. Jacobson is also the Vice President for Development for the Society for the Study of American Women Writers.
