Akua Banful is a Ph.D. candidate in English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. Her dissertation, “The Hostile Tropics: Towards a Postcolonial Discourse of Climate,” explores the interaction between imperialism and the representations of tropical nature and life in tropical climates in examples from anglophone, francophone, and lusophone literatures. Her Public Humanities project, “Climate Arts: Reading, Recycling, Making,” will create a mixed curriculum of climate-oriented fiction and recycled and otherwise environmentally engaged art that she will work through with public high school students. Through reading and discussing literature, contemplating recycled art, and completing a project of their own, this project aims to give young students a sense of the ways in which the arts can engage with, and respond to our current climate predicament.
