Robert Marzec
Please join me in congratulating Robert Marzec, associate professor of English, on the publication of his book, Militarizing the Environment: Climate Change and the Security State, published by the University of Minnesota Press. Robert’s book traces the rise of “environmentality,” a term he coined to describe a combat-oriented stance to climate change, marked by the military’s prominent role in environmental concerns, including engaging in “climate change war games” and preparing for the effects of global warming—from conflicts due to loss of food, water, and energy to the mass migration of millions of people displaced by rising sea levels.
In this extensive study of scientific, military, political, and economic formations across five centuries, he posits how this influential worldview in the United States and other nations threatens to supplant ideas of sustainability with demands for militarized versions of adaptation. He investigates alternatives in an ecological philosophy he refers to as “inhabitancy,” tracing the existence of this philosophy in historical court cases, contemporary movements such as the Brazilian Landless Workers Movement, and various indigenous environmental struggles.
In related research, Robert attended the Paris Climate Summit (COP21) in December 2015 to examine how summit participants addressed the importance and necessity of bringing scientific, political and artistic representations together to combat the inertia of climate change policy. He is also associate editor of Modern Fiction Studies, which publishes theoretically engaged and historically informed articles on modernist and contemporary fiction.
Congratulations, Dr. Marzec!
David A. Reingold
Justin S. Morrill Dean
College of Liberal Arts