News
Sixth Year of “Unprecedented” Webinar Series Highlights Fire Ecologies and Antifascist Literature
Over the past six years, the CALS “Unprecedented” Webinar Series has brought together scholars, writers, and cultural critics to reflect on developments in American literature and public life that continue to challenge the boundaries of precedent, policy, and imagination. While the series has its roots in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and the “unprecedented” reality that media coverage described, the series has tackled a wide range of topics, from speculative climate fiction to vaccine rhetoric and pseudoscience to the legacy of American book bans.
The first webinar of the 2025-2026 series, hosted in December, was titled “Urgent Lessons from Antifascist Works of American Literature and Culture.” The webinar responded to the immediate threat of censorship, attacks on DEI initiatives, critical race studies, and LGBTQ+ programs in our universities by turning to works of American literature and culture.
Graduate Student in English Phoebe Coogle, who moderated the webinar, notes that the “classroom is becoming a contested site—not just of learning, but of surveillance and struggle.” The three panelists included Christopher Vials, Professor of English at the University of Connecticut, Storrs; Annette Wannamaker, Professor of English at Eastern Michigan University; and Oliver Baker, Assistant Professor of English at Penn State University. All three scholars addressed these concerns by focusing on areas of teaching and research in their own classrooms.
Questions from the audience focused on pedagogy. Tina Chen, Associate Professor of English and Asian American Studies at Penn State, asked how the panelists might approach framing antifascist works of literature in the classroom. Baker explained that what institutions want is for instructors to “be our own censorship, so they don’t have to force us, but we do it ourselves out of fear.” Thus, Baker added, while we must be careful and sensitive in our teaching, teaching about collective activism and social movements is one solution. Other panelists focused on using the power of the tenure position for positive change both in and out of the classroom: Wannamaker stressed the importance of teaching banned books, while Vials focused on encouraging union organizing efforts.
The webinar concluded with a question from Penn State graduate student Thomas Bryant focused on the position of mourning within pedagogical discussions of fascism. In responding, Baker gestured to urgent organizing efforts in the past, stressing the power of historical social movements. The contradiction to these oppressive and repressive attacks, he argued, is the practice of “revolutionary optimism.”
In February, CALS hosted the second “Unprecedented” webinar of this year’s series, “Heat and the Humanities: Reframing Human Relationships to Heat and Wildfire.” Ella Campopiano, current CALS Graduate Research Assistant who moderated the event, said that the idea for the webinar arose from Amy Cardinal Christianson’s “Good Fire” podcast, which explores “the concept of fire as a tool for ecological health and cultural empowerment by Indigenous people around the globe.” Emerging from these ideas, three panelists from a range of backgrounds were invited to “contemplate historical opposition to fire” through works of American literature and culture.
Jennifer Ladino, Professor of English at the University of Idaho, focused on her work in the Confluence Lab in the field of “fire humanities.” Hsuan Hsu, Professor of English at the University of California, Davis, discussed art activism and the ways that “thermal violence is deeply entangled with colonial violence and capitalism,” while Alan Taylor, Professor Emeritus of Geography at Penn State, focused on the management and legacy of California wildfires.
The first question from the audience, from Penn State graduate student Justin Rizzi, asked how “US Forest Service rhetoric collides with art activism to influence how the public thinks about fire and climate crisis.” Hsu focused on the word “collide” to talk about the creation of community spaces that “make heat the occasion.” Ladino discussed how the rigid uniforms and imagery of the US Forest Service have encouraged artists to push back against the traditionality of the government agency.
The conversation was both highly localized, with presenters highlighting the importance of research and intervention into the local community, as well as national and global. The discussion also focused on how we translate across space and time to develop empathy. Calling wildfire a “geological scale problem,” Taylor added that he has been able to develop “virtual field trips” so that we might educate a larger public on how fire functions, and people can “see it for themselves, rather than needing to go through a translator.” In response to questions about cross-discipline and transnational work, Ladino brought forward a new way to think about this kind of work as “syn-disciplinarity,” with the approach being to “bring people together around a table on equal footing to dismantle disciplinary hierarchies from the very beginning.”
In its sixth year, the “Unprecedented” webinar series has ironically become a staple for the CALS community, bringing participants from across the country together to witness conversations between leading scholars and activists. What we might take away from this year’s discussions is a focus on care and pedagogy—we must teach our students about issues of institutional suppression, rising fascism, environmental degradation, and thermal violence and the ways that works of American literature and culture respond to these crises. Highlighting the intersections between these crises, academic fields, and across space and time might make our moment ultimately feel a little more “precedented.”
Over the past six years, the CALS “Unprecedented” Webinar Series has brought together scholars, writers, and cultural critics to reflect on developments in American literature and public life that continue to challenge the boundaries of precedent, policy, and imagination. While the series has its roots in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and the “unprecedented” reality that media coverage described, the series has tackled a wide range of topics, from speculative climate fiction to vaccine rhetoric and pseudoscience to the legacy of American book bans.
The first webinar of the 2025-2026 series, hosted in December, was titled “Urgent Lessons from Antifascist Works of American Literature and Culture.” The webinar responded to the immediate threat of censorship, attacks on DEI initiatives, critical race studies, and LGBTQ+ programs in our universities by turning to works of American literature and culture.
Graduate Student in English Phoebe Coogle, who moderated the webinar, notes that the “classroom is becoming a contested site—not just of learning, but of surveillance and struggle.” The three panelists included Christopher Vials, Professor of English at the University of Connecticut, Storrs; Annette Wannamaker, Professor of English at Eastern Michigan University; and Oliver Baker, Assistant Professor of English at Penn State University. All three scholars addressed these concerns by focusing on areas of teaching and research in their own classrooms.
Questions from the audience focused on pedagogy. Tina Chen, Associate Professor of English and Asian American Studies at Penn State, asked how the panelists might approach framing antifascist works of literature in the classroom. Baker explained that what institutions want is for instructors to “be our own censorship, so they don’t have to force us, but we do it ourselves out of fear.” Thus, Baker added, while we must be careful and sensitive in our teaching, teaching about collective activism and social movements is one solution. Other panelists focused on using the power of the tenure position for positive change both in and out of the classroom: Wannamaker stressed the importance of teaching banned books, while Vials focused on encouraging union organizing efforts.
The webinar concluded with a question from Penn State graduate student Thomas Bryant focused on the position of mourning within pedagogical discussions of fascism. In responding, Baker gestured to urgent organizing efforts in the past, stressing the power of historical social movements. The contradiction to these oppressive and repressive attacks, he argued, is the practice of “revolutionary optimism.”
In February, CALS hosted the second “Unprecedented” webinar of this year’s series, “Heat and the Humanities: Reframing Human Relationships to Heat and Wildfire.” Ella Campopiano, current CALS Graduate Research Assistant who moderated the event, said that the idea for the webinar arose from Amy Cardinal Christianson’s “Good Fire” podcast, which explores “the concept of fire as a tool for ecological health and cultural empowerment by Indigenous people around the globe.” Emerging from these ideas, three panelists from a range of backgrounds were invited to “contemplate historical opposition to fire” through works of American literature and culture.
Jennifer Ladino, Professor of English at the University of Idaho, focused on her work in the Confluence Lab in the field of “fire humanities.” Hsuan Hsu, Professor of English at the University of California, Davis, discussed art activism and the ways that “thermal violence is deeply entangled with colonial violence and capitalism,” while Alan Taylor, Professor Emeritus of Geography at Penn State, focused on the management and legacy of California wildfires.
The first question from the audience, from Penn State graduate student Justin Rizzi, asked how “US Forest Service rhetoric collides with art activism to influence how the public thinks about fire and climate crisis.” Hsu focused on the word “collide” to talk about the creation of community spaces that “make heat the occasion.” Ladino discussed how the rigid uniforms and imagery of the US Forest Service have encouraged artists to push back against the traditionality of the government agency.
The conversation was both highly localized, with presenters highlighting the importance of research and intervention into the local community, as well as national and global. The discussion also focused on how we translate across space and time to develop empathy. Calling wildfire a “geological scale problem,” Taylor added that he has been able to develop “virtual field trips” so that we might educate a larger public on how fire functions, and people can “see it for themselves, rather than needing to go through a translator.” In response to questions about cross-discipline and transnational work, Ladino brought forward a new way to think about this kind of work as “syn-disciplinarity,” with the approach being to “bring people together around a table on equal footing to dismantle disciplinary hierarchies from the very beginning.”
In its sixth year, the “Unprecedented” webinar series has ironically become a staple for the CALS community, bringing participants from across the country together to witness conversations between leading scholars and activists. What we might take away from this year’s discussions is a focus on care and pedagogy—we must teach our students about issues of institutional suppression, rising fascism, environmental degradation, and thermal violence and the ways that works of American literature and culture respond to these crises. Highlighting the intersections between these crises, academic fields, and across space and time might make our moment ultimately feel a little more “precedented.”