New York Council for the Humanities: Reading Groups: Adult Reading Groups

Wasting Away: Contemporary Writing on Environmental Crises

This series uses science writers and novelists to explore our contemporary environmental crisis and call us to responsible movement in the world that revolves around altered interactions with waste. Each session centers on a book selected by Mary Foltz, a graduate student at SUNY Buffalo.

The series opens with a discussion of Garbage Land: On the Secret Trail of Trash, by journalist Elizabeth Royte, which explores the underworld of detritus and the movement of personal waste to the landfill.

This session focuses on Don DeLillo's White Noise, the fictional dark comedy of a cloud hovering over a small city and the evaluation of personal choices it engenders.

A conversation about Water Wars: Privatization, Pollution and Profit, by Vandana Shiva, which explores the global problems of access to clean water and of private purchase of this natural resource.

The series concludes with a discussion of Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower, an examination of human life after a fictional environmental collapse and celebrates the human capacity for change.

This series is supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities "We the People" initiative. It was developed in collaboration with the Center for the Humanities of the CUNY Graduate Center and first presented at the New York Public Library. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this program do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.