Lauren LaFauci is assistant professor of environmental humanities at Linköping University (LiU), where for the last two years she was also Program Convener of the Seed Box Environmental Humanities Collaboratory. She holds a Ph.D. in English Language and Literature from the University of Michigan, specializing in American Studies (from 1400 to 1900), environmental humanities, and the history of medicine and disease. She is currently completing a book manuscript on the related histories of racial formation and environment in the pre-Civil War United States. Her work has been supported by Formas, the Swedish Environmental Research Council, as well as the Posthumanities Hub at LiU; the American Philosophical Society; the Andrew Mellon Foundation; the Harrison Institute for the Study of American History, Literature, and Culture at the University of Virginia; and the Franklin Institute for North American Studies at the University of Alcalá, Spain; among others. She has taught over 40 different courses in the areas of environmental humanities, literature, and writing at universities in Germany, Sweden, and the United States, where she also held the position of Assistant Professor of English, Gender Studies, and Sustainability Studies before relocating to Sweden in Fall 2015. She has experience directing theses and advising students in these fields and others. Lauren has delivered over 30 invited talks at conferences and events around the world, and her work has been published (or is forthcoming in) journals such as Early American Literature, Interdisciplinary Literary Studies, Anthropology and Medicine, and Southern Spaces. She is currently a project leader for Herbaria 3.0, a digital citizen humanities project collecting the intertwined stories of plants and people, and she serves as an international liaison for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE), the largest US environmental humanities organization.
Memberships
- Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE)
- C19: The Society of Nineteenth-Century Americanists
- Ecocritical Network for Scandinavian Studies (ENSCAN)
- European Association for the Study of Literature, Culture, and Environment (EASLCE)
- Literary and Cultural Plant Studies Network, University of Arizona
- Society of Early Americanists (SEA)
Leadership in Professional Societies/Organizations
- Liaison, Society of Early Americanists (SEA) and Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE)
- International Co-Liaison (European region), Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE)
- Research Area Leader, “Multispecies Stories,” The Seed Box Environmental Humanities Collaboratory
Research Group
- Herbaria 3.0: Telling Stories at the Human-Plant Interface (www.herbaria3.org)
–with Tina Gianquitto (Colorado School of Mines, USA), Dawn Sanders (Göteborgs universitet), Maura Flannery (emerita, St. John’s University, USA), Terry Hodge (University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA)
Publications over the past five years (2013-2018):
Book manuscript in progress
Peculiar Natures: Race, Environment, and Nationalism in the Southern States, 1789-1865
Peer-Reviewed Articles
Forthcoming: “Stranger’s Fever”: Yellow Fever and Belonging in the Pre-Civil War South. Southern Spaces. Public Health in the US and Global South Series.
Forthcoming: “Regions of Hopeless Disorder: Swampland and Slavery in the 19th-Century South.” Swamp Souths: Literary and Cultural Ecologies. Eds. Eric Gary Anderson, Taylor Hagood, Kirstin Squint, and Anthony Wilson. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2018.
Forthcoming: “The Safest Place on Earth”: Cultural Imaginaries of Safety in Scandinavia. Lead article. Nordic Narratives of Nature and the Environment. Ecocritical Approaches to Northern European Literatures and Cultures. Eds. Reinhard Hennig, Anna-Karin Jonasson, and Peter Degerman. Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books (Rowman & Littlefield), 2018.
“Encountering Early American Environments.” Early American Literature 51.2 (Summer 2016): 461-476.
Under Review: Ghosting the Baltic Sea: Chemical Weapons, Multispecies Ethics, and Untimely Entanglements. With Cecilia Åsberg and Christina Fredengren.
Website (Citizen Humanities/Digital Environmental Humanities)
Herbaria 3.0. www.herbaria3.org. With Tina Gianquitto, Dawn Sanders, Maura Flannery, and Terry Hodge.
Reference Articles
“Celia Thaxter.” In Encyclopedia of American Environmental Literature, ed. Brian Jones. Facts on File, 2013.
“Among the Isles of Shoals.” In Encyclopedia of American Environmental Literature, ed. Brian Jones. Facts on File, 2013.
Book Reviews
Forthcoming: Liquid Landscape: Geography and Settlement at the Edge of Early America. Eighteenth-Century Fiction, 2018.
Ariel’s Ecology: Plantations, Personhood, and Colonialism in the American Tropics. Monique Allewaert. ISLE (Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment) 20.4 (Autumn 2014).
Doctoring Freedom: The Politics of African American Medical Care in Slavery and Emancipation. Gretchen Long. World Medical and Health Policy 5.3 (September 2013): 265-67.
Peer-reviewed Conference Presentations
May 2018
“Kith and Kin”: Thoreau and Yoga.
Symposium: Uses and Abuses of Thoreau at 200
Organization: University of Gothenburg, Sweden, Department of Literature, History of Ideas, and Religion (LIR).
March 2018
The Body: A Keyword for C19-C21 Environmental Humanities.
Seminar: “Keywords for Environmental Humanities.”
Organization: C19: The Society of Nineteenth-Century Americanists, Annual Meeting.
June 2017
Resistant to Recovery: Early American Materials, Spaces, and Sensory Worlds. Session organizer and chair.
Organization: Asssociation for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE), Biennial Meeting.
June 2017
The Great White North: Environmental Safety in Sweden and Norway.
Session: “Dystopias and Disasters.”
Organization: Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE), Biennial Meeting.
Dec 2016
Narratives of Nordic Safety: Preparing for the “Long Emergency.”
Workshop: “Nordic Narratives of Nature and Environment.”
Organization: ENSCAN: Ecocritical Network for Scandinavian Studies, Mid-Sweden University, Sundsvall, Sweden.
Nov 2016
Botanic Knowledge and Civil War.
Panel: “Natural Knowledge, Environment, and Society.”
Organization: Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts (SLSA), Annual Meeting.
April 2016
Shallow Waters: Chemical Weapons, Toxic Embodiment, and the Deep Archives of the Baltic Sea. Individual presentation of collaborative research with Astrida Neimanis and Cecilia Åsberg.
Workshop: Unexpected Encounters with Deep Time: Haunting.
Organization: Edinburgh Environmental Humanities Network, University of Edinburgh, Scotland.
June 2015
Re-Reading the Roots: Early American Plants and Animals. Session organizer and respondent.
Organization: Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE), Biennial Meeting.
March 2014
Rebel Plants: The CSA and Southern Botanic Knowledge.
Seminar: “Nineteenth-Century Natural Knowledge and the Loss of the Commons.”
Organization: C19: The Society of Nineteenth-Century Americanists, Annual Meeting.
May 2013
Environmental Histories of Race: Reading Lacunae in the Letters of Southern Planters, Doctors, and their Correspondents.
Roundtable: “Reading the Environment in(to) the Archive.” Session organizer.
Organization: Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE), Biennial Meeting.
Invited Talks
April 2016
“We Have Never Been Human.” Respondent to Tarsh Bates, with Olga Cielemęcka and Marietta Radomska.
Gothenburg International Science Festival (Göteborgs Vetenskapsfestivalen).
April 2016
“Environment, Race, and Nationalism in Early American Literature and Culture.”
Södertörn University, Stockholm, Sweden.
April 2013
“Searching for Peculiar Nature: Reflections on Environment, Knowledge, and the Archive.”
University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia.
Invited Blog Posts
Small Notes, University of Virginia, 5 July 2013. First “Patron’s Choice” feature on this Special Collections blog http://smallnotes.library.virginia.edu/2013/07/05/slave-negotiates-her-own-sale/