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RSS2011 Hulings Lecture explores nature, satire in Latin American and Caribbean literature
February 10, 2011
Dr. Michèle Geslin Small, professor of English and modern languages at Northland College, will present her final lecture as the A.D. and Mary Elizabeth Andersen Hulings Distinguished Chair in Humanities at 7:00 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 10. The lecture, titled “The Metaphoric use of Nature for Biting ‘Satire’ in Latin American and Caribbean Short Stories,” will be held in the Alvord Theater on the campus of the College and is free and open to the public.
Dr. Small is concluding her work as the Hulings Distinguished Chair, a position that she has held since 2007, after receiving a one-year extension for her work. She is the 4th Northland faculty member to serve as the Hulings Distinguished Chair since its founding in 1992. Her presentation will examine the use of nature in Latin American and Caribbean satire.
The material presented as part of the upcoming lecture represents a small portion of her broader research into the use of nature in Latin American and Caribbean literature which will be used to develop an anthology and an upper-level environmental literature course at the College over the next two years.
Dr. Small’s research in environmental literature from Latin America and the Caribbean took off after a 2002 trip to Latin America funded by a National Endowment of the Humanities (NEH) grant-funded, where she was encouraged to apply for a broader NEH grant to develop advanced, environmentally-themed curricula at Northland. She describes the area of study as an emerging field, and says that studying literature from other cultures is key to a better understanding of the world around us.
“Most environmental literature that has been published here,” she says, “has been American, representing American values. Literature from other cultures represents different values and a different treatment of nature.”
Dr. Small holds masters of arts degrees from the State University of New York-Albany and the University of Nice, France. She also holds a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota-Minneapolis. A true citizen of the world, she approaches her teaching from an international perspective and has been instrumental in developing curriculum at Northland that includes an international perspective. A member of the Northland faculty since 1972, she was involved in the original National Endowment for the Humanities grant in 1977 that led to the development of the Humanities in Nature curriculum at the College.
The A.D. and Mary Elizabeth Andersen Hulings Distinguished Chair in the Humanities was founded in 1992. Its purpose is the promotion of the humanities at Northland College through activities including scholarship, public performance, artistic creation, mentoring of colleagues informally and formally through faculty seminars and workshops, and facilitation of events that raise the visibility of the humanities such as public lecture and curricular development. Previous holders of the Hulings Chair include Ernest Partridge, 1993-1998; Judith Scoville, 1998-2004; Leslie Alldritt, 2004-2007; and Michèle Small, 2007-present.
