Karen Pinkus is Professor of Italian and Comparative Literature at Cornell University.  She is a minor graduate field member in Studio Art and a Faculty Fellow of the Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future.

For more than a decade, Karen has been working between Italian studies and environmental humanities with a focus on climate change. She is Editor of Diacritics. Her books include Fuel: A Speculative Dictionary, Clocking Out: The Machinery of Life in 60s Italian Cinema, exploring issues around labor, automation and repetition in Italian art, literature, design and film of the 60s, and the forthcoming Subsurface, Narrative, Climate Change.

KAREN PINKUS

For many years I wrote, taught, and published about climate change from a more philosophical, existential point of view, especially thinking about deep time, but I did come back to fuels with my Fuel book in part for the fact that so much of the press and so much of public discourse confuses fuel and energy, and it’s still happening today. I thought about this so long and the same themes, the same tropes are still being recycled.

This interview was conducted by Mia Funk & Sophia Luongo with the participation of collaborating universities and students. Associate Interviews Producer on this podcast was Sophia Luongo. Digital Media Coordinator is Hannah Story Brown.

Mia Funk is an artist, interviewer and founder of The Creative Process.