Visual Culture Program Event

Monday, March 30, 2026

4:00pm to 5:00pm

Dabney Hall 110 (Treasure Room)

Environmental Feeling and Environmental Fact: The Case of the Monterey Shore

Margaret Cohen, Andrew B. Hammond Professor of French Language, Literature, and Civilization, and Professor of English, and by courtesy, of French and Italian and of Comparative Literature, Stanford University,

A powerful contribution of the humanities to the study of the environment is the ability to identify emotions that accompany their experience, in the case of both blue and green environments. Relatedly, the blue or oceanic humanities has at least some strains evoke marine environment through highly metaphorical and creative language and practices.

My paper inquires into correlating the imagination and emotions elicited by an environment with its physical reality attending to the case of how people felt about the Monterey shore in the 1930s. During this period, we have ample literary and cultural documentation about the area, in the writings of John Steinbeck as well as in popular newspapers, among other sources. We also have important scientific description by intertidal ecologists such as Ed Ricketts and Willis Hewatt. What can we learn from coordinating the two types of documentation about people's relation to the shore? When are fantasies and emotions in sync with physical reality and if they are not, what can that disconnect reveal?

For more information, please contact Joanna Poon by phone at 626-395-1724 or by email at [email protected].

Event Series

Visual Culture Program Series

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