Steve Mentz
Title
Toward a Wetter World: The Blue Humanities in the Anthropocene
Abstract
Each of us has a personal relationship with water, from the ocean beach or lakefront where we like to spend holidays, to the water we drink on a hot day, to water we used to wash our bodies this morning, to the water that irrigates the crops that become the food that we eat. Each of our nations and cultures also has a historical relationship with water that emerges from water-borne patterns of migration, violence, and trade.
The Blue Humanities asks us to engage with water as both substance and idea. We think we know this element, but the more we pursue it, the more we must reimagine how human relationships with water shape our lives, our history, and our future. During the present Anthropocene, the rise in global temperatures and sea levels is giving us a wetter world – which means more water in places we do not want or expect it.
This lecture begins by introducing water’s alien and intimate faces in literary culture and Blue Humanities scholarship. It examines the mythic figure of the mermaid and connections between literature, watery environments, and spiritual insight, before concluding with reflections on buoyancy and new forms of intimacy between humans and water.
Keywords: Blue Humanities, Anthropocene, mermaid, poetics, buoyancy, Shakespeare, Melville
Bio
Steve Mentz is Professor of English at St. John’s University in New York City. A leading voice in Blue Humanities scholarship, he is the author of seven books including An Introduction to the Blue Humanities (2023), Ocean (2020), Shipwreck Modernity (2015), and At the Bottom of Shakespeare’s Ocean (2009). His eco-poetry appears in Sailing without Ahab (2024) and chapbooks including Swim Poems (2022).