Novel Ecologies: Nature Remade and the Illusions of Tech

Please join us for a LENS book talk with Princeton Professor Allison Carruth on Wednesday, May 14 at 4pm. Her research interests span a wide range from environmental humanities to science communication, and we're so excited to have her share her latest work with us. Light food and refreshments will be provided.

Novel Ecologies challenges the conviction that climate change and other environmental crises must be met with ever larger-scale forms of technological intervention. Against the new worlds conjured by Google, Meta, Open AI, Amazon, SpaceX, and a host of lesser-known start-ups, Carruth marshals writers and artists who imagine provisionally hopeful environmental futures while refusing to forget the histories that have made the world what it is.

Allison Carruth is a professor in the Program in American Studies and High Meadows Environmental Institute at Princeton University. Her current research interests include environmental narrative and science communication; the role of artists and writers in contemporary American environmental and food justice movements; and evolving relationships in the United States between technology and ecology. For over a decade, she has worked on collaborations that aim to bridge ideas from and re-imagine the boundaries between the arts, humanities, and sciences. She is the author of Global Appetites: American Power and the Literature of Food (Cambridge University Press, 2013) and co-author with Amy L. Tigner of Literature and Food Studies (Routledge, 2018), and Novel Ecologies: Nature Remade and the Illusions of Tech (University of Chicago Press, 2025).