March 7th 2008 • Printer version

Oregon Professors William Rossi and Louise Westling to Speak at ENR Fireside Conversation Series Wednesday, March 12 at 4:30 p.m.

The University of Oregon’s School of Law’s Environmental and Natural Resources Law Program, along with the University of Oregon’s Environmental Studies Program, continues its “Earth on Fire: A Series of Fireside Conversations on Global Warming” 2007-2008 series with a talk by Oregon Professors William Rossi and Louise Westling who will speak on “Reading, Rhetoric, and Climate.”

Oregon Department of English Professor Rossi is currently completing research on Henry Thoreau and 19th century evolutionary discourse; senses of place and displacement in American literature.  He has edited numerous publications on Thoreau, including Wild Apples and Other Natural History Essays and “Thoreau’s Transcendental Ecocentrism,” in Thoreau’s Sense of Place.  Prior to joining Oregon’s faculty in 1994, Rossi earned a Ph.D. in English from the University of Minnesota and a master’s degree in art history from the University of Missouri. 

Professor Westling teaches courses in both Oregon’s English Department and Environmental Studies Program.  Her current research focuses on ecophenomenology and literature, animality, and embodiment and language.  She is the author of Sacred Groves and Ravaged Gardens: The Fiction of Eudora Welty, Carson McCullers, and Flannery O’Connor; Eudora Welty; and The Green Breast of the New World: Landscape, Gender and American Fiction.  Prior to joining the Oregon faculty in 1971, she earned a Ph.D. at the university.        

The event will take place Wednesday, March 12, from 4:30 to 5:30 p.m., in the Many Nations Longhouse adjacent to the School of Law.  It is free and open to all members of the University community.