Blue Humanities: Poetics That Unsettle the Oceanic Demise

Amidst the climate crisis, warming oceans demand collaborations across science and technology studies and histories of anti-imperialism. Shifting attention off dry land, “blue humanities” draw from multiple genres and disciplines to answer such questions as: How are oceanic flows transformed by climate change, capitalism, and empire? What narrative methods are suitable for understanding oceans that carry traces of refusal and survival? How do queer and Indigenous perspectives seep into water? Climate fiction, science and technology studies, and histories of resistance at sea will be examined through novels, poetry, ethnography, and film. We will experiment with writing through “submerged” and “wet" perspectives that potentially unsettle fixed categories. Approaching the environment from the sea, underwater, and offshore makes space for decolonial imaginations, queer ecologies, and more-than-human relations.