Join us for an innovative lecture on the Blue Humanities from pioneer of the field, Steve Mentz (St. John's University). An interdisciplinary subset of ecocriticism, the Blue Humanities examines the way humans interact with water and challenges our land-based biases. At a time of rising sea levels, extreme weather, and oceanic biodiversity loss, studying our engagement with fresh and salt water ecologies in literature, visual culture, and history is an increasingly important research area. Mentz will deliver a lecture from his work in water-centric thinking and Early Modern English literature.

Steve Mentz is Professor of English at St. John’s University in New York City. His most recent book, Sailing without Ahab: Ecopoetic Travels, appeared in April 2024 from Fordham University Press. He is author of six other books, An Introduction to the Blue Humanities (2023), Ocean (2020), Break Up the Anthropocene (2019), Shipwreck Modernity: Ecologies of Globalization, 1550-1719 (2015), At the Bottom of Shakespeare’s Ocean (2009) and Romance for Sale in Early Modern England (2006). He is also editor or co-editor of seven collections: Water and Cognition in Early Modern English Literature (2024), A Cultural History of the Sea in the Early Modern Age (2021), The Routledge Companion to Marine and Maritime Worlds, 1400-1800 (2020), The Sea in Nineteenth-Century Anglophone Literary Culture (2017), Oceanic New York (2015), The Age of Thomas Nashe (2013), and Rogues and Early Modern English Culture (2004). He has written many articles and chapters on ecocriticism, Shakespeare, early modern literature, and the blue humanities. His poetry chapbook, Swim Poems, appeared in 2022 from Ghostbird Press. He curated an exhibition at the Folger Shakespeare Library, “Lost at Sea: The Ocean in the English Imagination, 1550 – 1750” (2010). He blogs at The Bookfish, www.stevementz.com and (still) tweets @stevermentz.