Amplifying the Anthropocene

Overview

How can storytelling amplify the Anthropocene?

Foodways are central and highly controversial components of the Anthropocene equation, provoking debates over culture, energy, water, equity, diversity, labor, global supply chains, technology, industry, etc. They have also increasingly become a key subject in visual storytelling, especially in mainstream television and publishing. We explore ways of leveraging these media to “amplify” the stakes of the anthropocene. One approach is to develop TV pilots centered on stories about plant-based foodways, working with professional screenwriters to explore alternatives to didacticism in communicating about dietary reform. A second approach is to work with our students in our Spring 2022 course, “Foodways for the Anthropocene,” where we will examine how climate change is already something we can taste, a kitchen table issue that we confront daily, albeit with a repertoire of skills for addressing it. As a final project our students will collectively design a Guide to Sustainable Eating at NYU Abu Dhabi. Envisioned as an updated alternative to the historically important genre of the community cookbook, the guidebook, like our TV pilots, draws on visual and verbal storytelling as a way to share experience about cooking and purchasing food in and around our campus, in the interest of building a community capable of engaging in non-didactic discourse about dietary change.

Project Researchers

Sophia Kalantzakos

Mark Swislocki

“Meet Me Halfway”

How does one communicate what it means to be living in the Anthropocene in the climate crisis era and reach wider audiences? Sophia Kalantzakos, Professor of Environmental Studies and Public Policy at NYUAD embarked on a journey to answer this question and wrote a tv series that’s climate informed but hopefully still entertaining. Meet me halfway, is an emotionally charged contemporary family drama, a story of succession. The family, lives in Greece and runs a food conglomerate, but in the climate crisis era how we produce food and what we eat is becoming a major challenge. In the summer of 2023, she visited Kerkini, a man-made lake meant to be a reservoir for the thirsty crops of the region that has become an important ecological sanctuary. A tug of water between farmers and nature looms in the horizon as the climate crisis worsens. Kalantzakos ponders on what we will do, but hopes that we might meet Halfway.

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