Our April 14 event features a conversation with three faculty on campus who are thinking about whales: Brett Ashley Kaplan (Comparative and World Lit), whose 2022 debut novel Rare Stuff [https://www.spuytenduyvil.net/rare-stuff.html] features a subplot about Yiddish-speaking whales, Deke Weaver (School of Art and Design), who will be presenting the latest performance in his Unreliable Bestiary series next fall: CETACEAN (The Whale) [https://www.unreliablebestiary.org/projects/cetacean/]; and Jamie Jones (English) whose forthcoming book, Rendered Obsolete: Energy Culture and the Afterlife of US Whaling, tells the cultural history of whaling in the context of nineteenth-century energy transitions.
Brett, Deke, and Jamie are sharing with the group a handful of (very short!) readings about whales that have inspired their work. We'd like to open up a discussion with the group: What does it mean that people working in very different disciplines/media are turning their attention to cetaceans? Why does the whale (or the figure of the whale) lend itself to so many different projects of meaning-making? Please let us know if you'd like to receive the reading packet before our meeting.
