EH +ARTS LAB LAUNCH: COBB/PLASTIC
As they seek to poison the ground beneath their own feet, the water they themselves drink and the air they themselves breathe, we need those who seek, see, and articulate the truth of a deregulated “growth” more than ever.
Join the Environmental Humanities + Arts Lab of the University of Chicago (The City and its Others) for our inaugural public event: a discussion with Allison Cobb of her incredible book Plastic: An Autobiography, Valentine's Day, 4 pm, Social Sciences Tea Room. Vegan food to follow.
This event is an extension of our book club, and is free and open to the public.
A free e-chapbook representing the first instantiation of Plastic, An Autobiography is available here from Essay Press.
Co-sponsored by the Department of English/EH + Arts Lab, Creative Writing, and CEGU
Plastic, an Autobiography is the winner of the 2022 CLMP Firecracker Award and the 2022 Oregon Book Award with the following citation from author John Freeman: “Why have we created a culture of such wanton waste if we want to live on earth? In the long shelf of books interrogating our moment in the climate crisis, this memoir is a sharp, urgent breakthrough, a triumph of honesty.”
The book blends reportage, research and memoir. An abandoned plastic car part inspires a journey through the past and present to interrogate the role of plastic in our lives.
Allison Cobb (pronouns she/her) is the author of four books: Plastic: an Autobiography (winner of the Oregon Book Award and the Firecracker Award); Green-Wood; After We All Died; and Born2.
Cobb’s work has appeared in Best American Poetry, Denver Quarterly, Colorado Review, and many other journals. She has been a resident artist at Djerassi and Playa and received fellowships from the Oregon Arts Commission, the Regional Arts and Culture Council, and the New York Foundation for the Arts.
A native of Los Alamos, NM, where the first atomic bombs were made, Allison collaborated in Suspended Moment performances with Hiroshima native and visual artist Yukiyo Kawano, Butoh dancer Meshi Chavez, and sound artist Lisa DeGrace.
Allison sits on the board of Fonograf Editions, and contributes to environmental and climate justice efforts at Environmental Defense Fund. She lives in Portland, Oregon.
The Environmental Humanities + Arts Lab (The City and its Others) is a transdisciplinary lab based in the English department and conceived as a partner of the Committee on Environment, Geography, and Urbanization, organized around the study of rural, urban, and ex-/suburban life and the environment—including the peripheral or sacrifice zones that are not usually conceived of as part of the metropolis, but are in many ways its drivers.
We aim to synthesize the strengths of core faculty in new ways to support innovative critical and critical-creative research by students in the humanities on topics that may range from conceptions of land-, sky-, and seascape to environmental justice to plantation economies. We will do so in part by animating our own urban locale in Chicago as a laboratory for critical thought—both about our environmental conditions and about the mutual implication of city, country, suburb, sacrifice zone, and the varied forms of hinterlands here and beyond.
In 2024-25 we are expanding the initiative by launching a series of public events aimed at connecting different campus constituencies, from undergraduate to graduate students and faculty, and the general public, beginning with conversations with Allison Cobb, author of Plastic: An Autobiography and with ecopoet/permaculturist julie ezelle patton, author featured in the latest issue of Chicago Review. Stay tuned for further events, including our regular book club and writing workshops in the parks.
Among our core faculty, Jennifer Scappettone has spearheaded the lab. Writing and Research Advisor Nell Pach supervises the lab, and our current interns are Emma Edwards (BA Chemistry/Environmental Science) and Evgenia Anastasakos (BA English/History).
If you’d like to get involved or be added to our mailing list, please write to Nell at npach@uchicago.edu.
