Blue Extinction

Rachel Murray, Vera Fibisan

A two-day hybrid symposium taking place at the University of Sheffield and on Zoom.

This event is hosted by ShARC (Sheffield Animal Studies Research Centre) at The University of Sheffield. Organisers: Dr Rachel Murray and Dr Vera Fibisan.Contact: blueextinction22@gmail.comAquatic species are threatened with extinction at an unprecedented rate due to the combined effects of overfishing, pollution, climate change, acidification, and other human impacts. Yet blue ecosystems have remained an overlooked and neglected subject of enquiry in animal studies, where the focus has tended to be on terrestrial – or green – habitats. The extinction of aquatic organisms poses particular perceptual, epistemological, and affective challenges: many of the species that are disappearing were never apparent, or known, to us in the first place. And those that we are aware of are often considered to be impossibly remote from, and alien to, human life, making it difficult to consider their lives grievable in a traditional sense.Recent work in the blue humanities has seen a growing emphasis on nonhuman life and multispecies ecologies (Alaimo; DeLoughrey; Neimanis; Shewry). In the field of extinction studies, there has also been an increasing focus on untold, unloved, and invisible lives (Bastian; Bird Rose; Heise; Van Dooren). Building on these approaches, this two-day symposium will examine the subject of aquatic biodiversity loss from a range of disciplinary perspectives.It will ask: what kinds of narratives and modes of storytelling are best suited to the subject of blue extinction? What impact does the actuality of extinction have on ideas of literary representation and interpretation? What role might literary methods such as close reading play in helping us to imagine and come to terms with extinctions which occur largely out of sight (Bastian)? Can an awareness of blue extinction foster new affective and ethical relations with forms of life that are often considered to be monstrous or alien (Helmreich)? Might an attentiveness to past marine extinctions, and their cultural representations, be useful to us in our present age of biodiversity loss? And can collaborations between the humanities and the sciences yield new perspectives on blue extinction along with ways to combat it?<h3>Programme Summary:</h3>**The timezone of the symposium is British Summer Time (BST)**Thursday, 7th of July 202209.00-10.30 Panel 1: Sounding Extinction (SR8)10.30-10.45 Comfort Break10.45-12.15 Panel 2: Blue Elegy (SR8)12.15-13.00 Lunch Break (G03)13.00-14.30 Panel 3: Beyond the ‘Monstrous’ and the ‘Alien’ (SR8)14.30-14.45 Comfort Break 14.45-16.15 Panel 4: Marine Ecology and Conservation (SR8)16.15-16.30 Coffee Break (G03)16.30-18.00 Panel 5: Blue Extinction in Visual Art and Culture (SR8)Friday, 8th of July 20229.15 – 10.45 Panel 6: Pollution/Contamination (SR8)11.00-12.30 Panel 7: Narrative Frameworks (SR8)12.30-13.15 Lunch Break (G03)13.15 – 14.45 Panel 8: Post/De/Anti-Colonial Perspectives (SR8)14.45-15.15 Coffee Break (G03)15.15-16.45 Panel 9: Blue Kinship and Care (SR8)16.45-17.15 Reflections and Publication Plans (SR8)<h3>Full Programme:</h3>**All times listed are BST**Thursday, 7th of July 202209.00 – 10.30 Panel 1: Sounding Extinction (SR8)1) Sarah Bezan, ‘The Necrophonics of Blue Extinction: A Bi-Constructivist Account of Sound in Etienne de France’s Tales of a Sea Cow’2) Sophia Nicolov, ‘Sounding Whales: Beaked whale strandings in the British Isles’3) Sally Ann McIntyre, &#x27;Nocturne: Sonic Migrations: listening to lost signals and Cetacean sound in the Southern Ocean&#x27;---			10.30 – 10.45 Comfort Break----10.45 – 12.15 Panel 2: Blue Elegy (SR8)1) Max Karpinski, ‘Extraction/Extinction: Elegy in the Anthropocene and Kate Sutherland’s The Bones Are There’2) Vera Fibisan, ‘Hydroelegy in Elizabeth-Jane Burnett’s Swims and Of Sea’3) Bonnie Gordon, ‘Memorialising aquatic extinction: the transformative potential of multispecies grief’---12.15-13.00 Lunch Break (G03)---13.00-14.30 Panel 3: Beyond ‘Monstrous’ and ‘Alien’ Life (SR8)1) Ana Carolina Torquato, ‘Agency and intentionality of aquatic animals in captivity: a case-study of João Guimarães Rosa’s ‘Zoo’ series’2) Gudrun Jakupsstovu, ‘Blue Extinctions: Narrating the Deep Life of the Greenland Shark’3) Karen Eckersley, ‘Surreal Seas and Queer Becomings - Elizabeth Bishop’s Darwinian Poetics’---14.30-14.45 Comfort Break (G03)---14.45 – 16.15 Panel 4: Marine Ecology and Conservation (SR8)1) Mark Carnall, ‘The Tale of the Smooth Handfish’2) Hannah Dickinson, ‘Imagining sturgeon futures: Caviar production and the political ecologies of sturgeon extinction’3) Andrew Webb, ‘Threats to Marine Biodiversity in Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring’---16.15 – 16.30 Coffee Break---16.30-18.00 Panel 5: Blue Extinction in Visual Art and Culture (SR8)1) Jessica Ullrich, Martin Ullrich, and Tabea Sabrina Weber, ‘Coral Extinction in Contemporary Art’2) Karim Townsend, ‘“Big, beautiful sea turtle”: Exploring Mike White’s subaquatic utopia from Enlightened to The White Lotus’3) Deborah Schrijvers, ‘Through the looking glass: Natural history objects recast as relational actants in Fiona Tan’s video Depot’Friday, 8th of July 20229.15 – 10.45 Panel 6: Pollution/Contamination (SR8)1) Ashley Bullen-Cutting, ‘Invasive Non-species: Plastic Poetics and The Majestic Plastic Bag’2) Camille Rouliere, ‘Metamorphosis: Extinction, Salt Entanglements and Shared Vulnerabilities’3) Rachel Lallouz, ‘Soft-bodied: Reading Vulnerability and Violence Through the Common Blue Mussel’---11.00-12.30 Panel 7: Narrative Frameworks (SR8)1) Elly McCausland, ‘‘No one wants to read about a barnacle’: Reframing ‘uncharismatic’ marine life in children’s literature’2) Killian Quigley, ‘Extinction and/as Inexpression: Thalassography in Anthropocene Oceans’3) Michelle Bastian, ‘Temporal Ecologies of Extinction in the Oceans, What can we learn from phenology?’---12.30 – 13.15 Lunch Break (G03)---13.15 – 14.45 Panel 8: Post/De/Anti-Colonial Perspectives (SR8)1) Henry Ivry, ‘Harnessing the Storm: Black Futures and the Oceanic Imaginary’2) Austin Read, ‘The struggle upstream: towards an anticolonial geography of extinction’3) Saba Pirzadeh, ‘Storying Extinction: Loss, Migration and Death in Amitav Ghosh’s Gun Island’---14.45-15.15 Coffee Break---15.15-16.45 Panel 9: Blue Kinship and Care1) Josephine Taylor, ‘Queer Mothering within Oceanic Environments and Dystopian Landscapes’2) Rosanne van der Voet, ‘Storytelling Against Blue Extinction: A Relationally Transformative Practice’3) Nathaniel Otjen, ‘Blue Care: Marine Conservation and Extinction’---16.45-17.15 Reflections and Publication Plans

Blue Extinction

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