Events & Public Talks
For speaking engagements, please contact Authors Outside
Select Recorded Events
Virtual Floating Coast book talk with Robert Macfarlane, via Emergence Magazine
“Do Whales Judge Us? Interspecies History and Ethics” Mahindra Center Environment Forum, Harvard
Upcoming Public Events
October 30, 10am: “Experimental Histories,” panel at the University College London Anthropocene Histories (online)
October 30, 6pm: “Stories Across Species,” Cross-STS Talk, History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology, and Society, MIT (in person)
December 11-12: "Global History, National History and Planetary History," panels at Sciences Po, Paris (in person)
April 1-3, 2025: The Shapiro Initiative on Environment and Society Lecture and Masterclass, University of Chicago
2024 Events
January 22, “Dams that Save: Law, Beavers, and the Making of the Yukon River,” Public Talk, Utah State University Logan (in person)
January 30, 12:00 EST: Looking North - Alternative Approaches to Landscape and Energy, in Conversation with artist Mhairi Killin (virtual registration required)
February 5, 4:30pm: “Dams that Save,” talk at the Ecotheories Colloquium, Princeton University (in person)
March 21: Conservation and Development in Alaska History, with Austin Ahmasuk, Jim Magadanz, and Courtney Carothers, part of the Critical Issues Series, Anchorage Museum (in person & virtual)
May 2: Maya K. Peterson Memorial Lecture, University of California, Santa Cruz (in person)
May 18-20: Events at the Étonnants Voyageurs Book Festival, Saint Malo, France
September 19, 7:00pm: Book discussion with Laura Marris, author of The Age of Loneliness, RiffRaff, Providence
October 10: “Dams that Save,” Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies, University of Michigan
October 24, 4pm: “Environmental Guesswork,” panel discussion with Jen Rose Smith and Hi’ilei Kawehipuaakahaopulani Hobart, Cogut Institute for the Humanities, Brown University (in person)
2023 Events
February 21: “Of Islands and Whales,” talk for Advaya’s Kinship course (virtual, registration required)
February 23: ““Arctic Energy Before Petroleum: Or, What Whales Can Tell Us About Writing History,” talk at the Laurelmead Community, Providence RI (in person)
February 27: “The Reindeer at the End of the World,” (virtual) University of Washington
March 7: Knight Distinguished Lecture, Washington University (in person)
March 18: Faith Communities for a Sustainable Future (FaCT) Talk (virtual)
April 13, noon: By Faculty for Faculty lecture, Brown University (in person)
April 16, 6pm: In conversation with Erica Berry, author of Wolfish, Twenty Stories Bookstore (in person)
May 1: “Do Whales Judge Us: Inspeices History and Ethics,” Provost’s Lecture Series, Virginia Commonwealth University (in person)
May 9: “History from the Dogsled: Animals, Climates and the Stakes of Telling the Past,'“ Annual History Graduate Student Association Lecture, University of Colorado, Boulder (in person)
May 11: “The Reindeer at the End of the World,” public talk, Elk River Arts & Lectures, Livingston Montana (in person)
May 18, 6pm: In conversation with Peggy O’Donnell Heffington, author of Without Children, Twenty Stories Bookstore (in person)
August 3, 6pm: In conversation with Elizabeth Rush, author of The Quickening, Twenty Stories Bookstore (in person)
September 19, 5pm EST: In conversation Hannah Stowe, author of Move Like Water: My Story of the Sea, Point Reyes Books (virtual)
October 3, 7:30pm: "The Reindeer at the End of the World," Public Lecture, Bowdoin College (in person)
October 20: LaFeber-Silbey Lecture, “History from the Dogsled: The Yukon and the Stakes of Telling the Past,” Cornell University (in person)
2022 Events
January 13: Melville-Nelles-Hoffmann Lecture in Environmental History, York University (virtual)
February 3: Anthropocene Working Group, History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge
April 20, noon: Placing Histories of Energy, virtual Environmental History Week panel with Victor Seow, Liz Chatterjee, Diana Montaño, Jennifer Eaglin, and On Barak
April 21 3:30pm: “The Reindeer and the End of the World: Apocalypse, Climate, and Soviet Dreams,” virtual talk at the University of British Columbia Centre for European Studies
April 22 4pm: “The Reindeer and the End of the World: Apocalypse, Climate, and Soviet Dreams,” live lecture at Brown University’s Re-Examining Conservation Symposium, Martinos Auditorium (virtual options also)
June 2, 3pm EST/noon PST: “Embrace Fearlessly the Burning World: A Tribute to Barry Lopez,” virtual event hosted by Point Reyes Books and featuring John Freeman, Robert Macfarlane, and others
August 25, 7pm: Talking Shop, Toolik Lake Field Station, Alaska (in person)
August 31st, 8pm: What is a Historian Doing in the Brooks Range? Arctic Interagency Visitor Center, Coldfoot AK (in person)
September 5, 5pm: Postcards from Floating Coast, Wrangell Mountains Center, McCarthy, Alaska (in-person)
September 16, 9:00am: “Of Ecologies & Possibilities: The Dawn of Everything as seen from the Yukon River,” opening talk for the “Writing Global Histories Today” symposium on The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity, with David Wengrow, Zoe Todd, and others. Brown University (in person and virtual).
September 27, 7pm: Brooklyn Book Festival panel on Environmental Storytelling, with Morgan Talty, Leigh Newman, Pitchaya Sudbanthad, and Kerri Arsenault, at The Center for Fiction (in person).
October 6: “History from a Dogsled: The Yukon and the Stakes of Telling the Past,” Keynote for the Alaska Historical Society, Anchorage Museum. In person and virtual.
October 16, 5pm: “The Art of the Fact,” with Kerri Arsenault and Rob Newton, opening for the Silent Springs: Global Histories of Pesticides and our Toxic World conference, Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society, Munich, Germany.
October 20: “Seen From a Floating Coast: New Perspectives on Environmental History,” workshop on Floating Coast, Sciences Po Grenoble, France.
October 21: “Seen From a Floating Coast: New Perspectives on Environmental History,” workshop on Floating Coast, EHESS BD, Paris, France.
November 4, 12:00: “Do Whales Judge Us? Interspecies History and Ethics,” Douglas Pimlott Memorial Lecture, University of Toronto (virtual)
November 4, 6:00pm: Moderator for “Gather. Make. Sustain: An Evening Panel Discussion Celebrating Indigenous Land-Based Practitioners,” featuring Robin Wall Kimmerer, Elizabeth Perry, Rashad Young and Keely Curliss, Brown University, Rhode Island (in person)
November 19, noon: “Global Souths/Native Norths” panel with Matthew P. Johnson, Owain Lawson, and Jen Rose Smith, University of Chicago (in person)
November 21: “The Reindeer at the End of the World: Climate, Apocalypse, and Soviet Dreams,” public talk at Luther College, Decorah Iowa (in person)
2021 Events
February 4: “The Value of Blubber: Soviet Whaling and the Cold War," Centre d'histoire, SciencesPo, Paris
February 19: “Re-imagining Russia,” discussion with Kate Brown, The Havighurst Center
February 23: “Portrait of a Summer on Fire: Covid, Climate Change, and the Ties that Bind Us,” Oregon State Pandemic as Portal Lecture Series
March 10, 1pm EST: Floating Coast reading and discussion, Eric Zencey Prize Ceremony
March 18: The Russian and Soviet North Pacific, with Ilya Vinkovetsky, The Harriman Institute, Columbia University
March 24, 7pm EST: Discussion of The Seed Keeper, with author Diane Wilson, Twenty Stories Bookstore
April 19: Environmental History Week talk, University of Pennsylvania
April 22: Keynote, “The Reindeer and the End of the World: Apocalypse, Climate, and Soviet Dreams” at “Climate in Context: Historical Precedents and the Unprecedented,” UT Austin
May 4, 3:00pm EDT: “The Reindeer at the End of the World,” 2021 Clark Lecture, University of Oregon
May 19: Animating Pasts & Landscapes, Emergence Magazine Writing Beyond the Environment (registration required)
June 4: Drinking with Historians virtual happy hour discussion of Floating Coast
June 18, 1pm: Book talk with Dara McAnulty, author of Diary of a Young Naturalist, Lost City Bookstore, DC
July 15: Coastal Studies Reading Group discussion of Floating Coast
September 1: “Do Whales Judge Us: Interspecies History and Ethics,” Institut for Sociologi, Miljø- og Erhvervsøkonom, SDU Denmark (virtual)
September 30: Carnegie Fellows Panel on Rethinking Rights, with Cecilia Menjivar and Jeffrey Kosseff, moderated by Azmat Khan
October 14: "Do Whales Judge Us?: Interspecies History and Ethics,” (virtual), Rutgers University Center for Cultural Analysis
October 18 4:30-6pm CST: “The Reindeer and the End of the World: Apocalypse, Climate, and Soviet Dreams,” (virtual) talk at Northwestern University, Klopsteg Lecture Series
October 24 2pm EST: Boston Book Festival panel, “After "Nature Writing": New Approaches to Writing about the Environment,” with Tony Perry, Joan Naviyuk Kane, Kate Brown, and Kerri Arsenault. Co-hosted by the Cogut Institute for the Humanities, Brown University
October 27: “Floating Coast” (virtual) talk at The Humanities and Our Natural World series, Hall Center for the Humanities, University of Kansas
November 4, 1pm EST: “Do Whales Judge Us: Interspecies History and Ethics,” (virtual) Stanford CREEES
November 12: “Do Whales Judge Us: Interspecies History and Ethics,” Public Talk (virtual), University of Oslo
November 29, 2pm EST: 5x15 Granta Launch Event: Should We Have Stayed Home?
December 2, 4pm: “The Reindeer and the End of the World: Apocalypse, Climate, and Soviet Dreams,” Lafayette College
2020 Events
January 24, 5:30pm: Discussion with Joan Naviyuk Kane, Cogut Center for the Humanities, Brown University
February 4, 12-1:30pm: “Waking Ice” - Discussion at the Harvard Environmental History Working Group
February 14, 7pm: “Can a Reindeer be Communist?” talk & book signing, Anchorage Museum, Anchorage AK
February 16, 1-6pm: From Sources to Story: A Nonfiction Writing Workshop, 49 Writers, Anchorage AK
April 27: Virtual Book Talk at The Greenhouse, University of Stavanger, Norway (recorded)
July 22: Fractured Coasts: A History Roundtable, virtual event with David Gange, Gerry Bigelow & Elsa Devienne
August 14: Virtual Book Launch discussion of Jessica J. Lee’s Two Trees Make a Forest, Point Reyes Books
September 3: Virtual discussion of Floating Coast with Pushkin Prize judge Richard Wright
September 4, 7pm: Virtual discussion of Mill Town with Kerri Arsenault, Twenty Stories Bookstore
September 24, noon: Aliaska to Alaska: Russian and American Colonialism, with Ilya Vinkovetsky, Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies at the University of Pittsburgh (virtual live event)
October 1, 7:30pm: Brooklyn Book Festival, panel with Kerri Arsenault, Emily Raboteau, Meehan Crist, John Freeman, and Meera Subramanian, hosted by the Center for Fiction and Orion Magazine (virtual)
October 8, 3pm EST: A conversation about Floating Coast with Elizabeth Rush, Point Reyes Bookstore (virtual)
October 13, 1pm EST: “Arctic Energy Before Petroleum: Or, What Whales Can Tell Us About Writing History,” virtual presentation, Pardee School of Global Studies Arctic Environmental Humanities Workshop
October 26, 4pm AK: “Do Whales Judge Us? Interspecies History and Ethics,” University of Alaska, Fairbanks
November 2, 1:30pm EST: The Bilson Lecture, the University of Saskatchewan (virtual)
November 16, 1:30pm EST: Academic Historians Writing for General Audiences, panel at UC Irvine Humanities Center
November 19: “Do Whales Judge Us?” Ransom A. Myers Lecture in Science and Society, Dalhousie University.
November 30: Patterns + Currents: Looking to Beringian Ecologies with Bathsheba Demuth and Jen Rose Smith
2019 Events
September 11, 7pm: Twenty Stories Books, Providence Rhode Island
September 15, 4pm: In conversation with Julia Phillips and Elizabeth Bradfield, Provincetown Book Festival
September 19, 7:30pm: Green Apple Books, San Francisco
October 3, 4pm: In conversation with Julia Phillips, Williams College Bookstore
October 4, 4pm: Author Q&A with Lukas Rieppel and Ethan Pollock, 108 Rhode Island Hall Brown University
October 10, 5pm: Public Talk, Georgetown University, Washington DC
October 15, 4:30pm: “The Ethical Choices of Whales,” public talk at Wesleyan University
October 17, 5:30pm: “The Ethical Choices of Whales” public talk and book signing, Yale Peabody Museum
October 19, 2pm: Sea Stories, conversation at the Boston Book Festival
October 23, 6pm: 57th Street Books / Seminary Co-op, Chicago
October 29, 7pm: Dragonfly Books, Decorah, Iowa
November 2, 6pm: Reading & book signing, Symposium Books, Providence RI
November 4, 5pm: “The Ethical Choices of Whales,” public talk at Fordham University, New York City
November 6, 5pm: “Do Whales Judge Us?” Mahindra Center Environment Forum, Harvard
November 12, 6pm: Public book talk & signing at The Teton County Library, Jackson Hole
November 15, 7pm: A conversation with Elizabeth Rush & Elizabeth Bradfield, Twenty Stories Books, Providence
November 19, 4:30pm: “The Ethical Choices of Whales,” public talk at Wellesley College
November 21, 3:30pm: “The Ethical Choices of Whales,” public talk & book signing, University of Oregon
December 5, 6pm: Book signing and discussion with Subhankar Banerjee, 516 ARTS, Albuquerque
December 9, 7pm: Discussion and book signing with Joan Naviyuk Kane, Harvard Book Store