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On February 20, Heather Houser, a professor of English at the University of Texas at Austin, will give an online public talk titled “Wondering as Refusal in Childfree Discourse.” 

The 2020s are a time of opting out, of saying no, of saying not so much. The trend to be childfree fits this impulse as it also speaks to worries about climate crisis, economic strain, and social injustice. This talk examines this trend as a form of refusal that instigates, on the one hand, firm declarations of choice and freedom and, on the other, dilated processes of wondering. Black feminist and reproductive justice scholars have heartily critiqued the former. What can we say about the latter in an era of opting out? I take up wondering as a mode of reproductive thought and action in which contorted grammar and weird forms of potentiality show some of the complexities of the childfree trend.  

The lecture is free and open to the public and will be held virtually as a Zoom webinar. Register at tiny.utk.edu/DLS-Houser.

About the speaker:  

Heather Houser is Mody C. Boatright Regents Professor in American and English Literature at The University of Texas at Austin; she teaches and writes about the environment, science, and 21st-century U.S. culture. Her books are Infowhelm: Environmental Art & Literature in an Age of Data (2020) and Ecosickness in Contemporary U.S. Fiction: Environment and Affect (2014), and she is a co-founder of Planet Texas 2050, a climate change grand challenge at UT Austin. She's currently working on two projects: Striving, a set of personal essays on class, gender, reading, and dance, and Childfree: Reproduction Amid Climate Crisis, a book about how reproduction and climate change are impacting each other today. 

About the Series: 

The UT Humanities Center's Distinguished Lecture Series bring acclaimed humanities scholars and renowned artists to the Knoxville campus for research-based conversations with UT faculty and graduate students and to give a public talk on a topic of the speaker's choosing. Speakers are nominated and hosted by faculty from our nine affiliated arts and humanities departments. Because only speakers with exceptional records of publication and research activity are eligible to receive a nomination as a visiting scholar, the program brings to campus some of the most cutting-edge and prolific intellectuals in the humanities today. Details on this season’s program are available at Humanities Center Website. If you enjoy this series and would like to support future UT Humanities Center programming, please visit our giving website to learn about giving opportunities. 

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