Robert Marzec
- Professor // English
- Professor // Philosophy and Literature // SIS
- Professor // SIS
- Professor // Comparative Literature // SLC
Research Focus
Environmental Humanities, Postcolonial Ecologies, Biodiversity & Environmental Justice, Environmental Ethics, Postcolonial Literature, Environmental Literature
Curriculum vitae
Office and Contact
Room: SC 282
Email: rmarzec@purdue.edu
Ph.D., Binghamton University, 2000
Biography
Robert Marzec is a professor of technology and environmental studies and a co-lead for the English Department’s ORACLE AI Lab. He received his PhD in English from Binghamton University in 2000 and joined the English Department at Purdue in 2007. He is a faculty affiliate with the Institute for Sustainable Futures, the School of Interdisciplinary Studies (SIS), and the Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences (NRES) program.
Marzec is an interdisciplinary postcolonial ecologist who specializes in bridging the natural and social sciences with the humanities. He partners with faculty across campus to address issues such as climate change, biodiversity conservation, environmental justice, and the impacts of artificial intelligence. He is co-founder and director of the Environmental and Sustainability Studies (ESS) certificate, an initiative that brings faculty together from the College of Agriculture, the College of Engineering, the College of Liberal Arts, the College of Science, and the College of Health and Human Sciences. His work has been funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and Purdue University.
He is the author of Militarizing the Environment: Climate Change and the Security State (Minnesota 2015), An Ecological and Postcolonial Study of Literature (Palgrave 2007), the editor of Postcolonial Literary Studies: the First 30 Years (Johns Hopkins 2011), and the editor of the journal MFS Modern Fiction Studies. He has two books on AI forthcoming from Cambridge University Press: The New Literature and AI Studies (an edited collection) and The Cambridge Introduction to Literature and AI (a monograph). He has published articles in boundary 2, Radical History Review, Public Culture, Postmodern Culture, The Global South, The Journal of Commonwealth and Postcolonial Studies, and Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene. He is currently working on a documentary about the 2021 UN Climate Summit in Glasgow, a monograph on biodiversity, and finishing a monograph entitled AI: The Archimedean Accident. Marzec is also an active musician and composer.