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print this pageFuture Kansas, New Texas, and The Cyber Okies: Images of Speculative Regional Reactions to Climate Change
Sarah Engel-Barnett
Saturday, September 26 - 10:00AM to 10:50AM
University of Oklahoma - FJC 203
I utilize fictional narratives to explore possible futures, and speculate how differing regional cultures might deal with more frequent and increasingly severe weather events brought on by climate change. In Future Kansas, I portray a future Kansas town rebuilt underground to avoid the tumultuous climate above. Next, in New Texas, I depict the New Texans' journey to a distant planet, seceding from an unlivable Earth. Finally, in The Cyber Okies, I consider Oklahoma's culture of perseverance, and plausible technological adaptations with which the Okies stubbornly stay put in an increasingly harsh land. I use these contemporary perceptions of regional identities, refracted and overlaid onto imagined cultures to show a comic, yet tragic, fiction adapted from the perceived irreparable changes already made in our environment.
speaker
Sarah Engel-Barnett
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