PULLMAN – Noël Sturgeon, professor in Women’s Studies, will present “From Pocahontas to Avatar: The ‘Ecological Indian’ and Environmentalism in U.S. Popular Culture,” at 7 p.m. Tuesday April 20, in the CUE, Room 202. The lecture is part of the WSU Common Reading Program and is free and open to the public.
Environmentalism’s starring role in the recent critically acclaimed film Avatar has infused adrenaline into the issue, bringing a call for solutions to ecological problems from new audiences. However, the plot presented in the movie may send the wrong messages, according to Sturgeon – lines such as “this is our land,” don’t approach the issue on a global scale.
Sturgeon will discuss the “Ecological Indian,” the common figure in environmental narratives in our culture. She will answer such questions as “what kind of environmentalism do these plots promote, what solutions are offered?” And “what are the implications of this dominant understanding of our environmental problems for all of us, including actual indigenous people?” The lecture is one of several environmentalism-themed events at WSU for Earth Week.
The WSU Common Reading Program has introduced first-year students to the intellectual life of the university and exposed them to the value of research and the power of ideas since 2007. This year’s book is “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” by best-selling author Michael Pollan, who visited campus in January. Common Reading Tuesdays is a lecture series that invites professors and researchers from all fields at WSU to connect their research, field or experience with freshmen and the issues.