Krista Comer
Rice University
Professor, Rice University; Visiting Scholar 2017, Stanford University Bill Lane Center for the American West
Seminar organizers Jennifer Tuttle and Jeannie Pfaelzer have invited my
participation in this seminar – I work in the contemporary period (for me
1945-present); this is a first C-19. However one recent essay of mine, calling for a
much larger feminist critical regional presence in work on the US West, is among the prompts for seminar discussions. My contribution will be theoretical, and in
conversation with the actual research interests of participants. I also see my role as listening and learning.
What seems helpful to this seminar discussion (pending reading materials) is
exploring feminist critical regionalism as it interfaces the new materialisms,
including environmental justice literatures, indigenous science/environment, and
the complexities of “climate” for explicitly feminist calls to conversation/action on
myriad topics related to Anthropocene. Would love to include “follow the carbon”
arguments of sociologist Daniel Cohen, because they bear on urban forms and
housing as a crucial site of critical regionalism.
I am writing a lot now on these topics. The two projects at Stanford, one in the Public Humanities through the Institute for Women Surfers (which I direct), the other traditional research project with big wave surfers and the California Coastal
Commission, may also be helpful as theory. Both address “feminist environment”
broadly: decolonial practices and activism, urban environmentalism, and water
knowledges interfacing with academic knowledge.
Feminist Critical Regionalism and the Climate of Western Literary Studies
