The StFX Dept of Celtic Studies presents a public lecture by Dr. Nathaniel Harrington: "'What is it like to lose a world?': Speculative fiction, language death, and the apocalypse."
Haunted villages, animate mountains, cyborg implants, séances: why have writers from marginalized language communities around the world so often adopted elements of fantasy, science fiction, and horror to express their experiences and the experiences of their communities?
Reading the Black American writer Samuel R. Delany’s classic science fiction novel Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand alongside poetry in Welsh, Scottish Gaelic, and Anishinaabemowin, this talk explores this question. How can thinking with these speculative genres help us to understand and respond to the experiences of linguistic marginalization and language death? How can engaging with literatures produced in marginalized languages help us face the threat of the end of the world?
If interested in attending via Zoom, please email @email
