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Department of English

UCLA

Recent Work

Widely recognized as one of the leading departments in the nation, English at UCLA long has been known for its innovative research and excellence in teaching. Today, the English Department maintains its strong commitment to traditional areas of study, while also supporting groundbreaking research and teaching in new and interdisciplinary approaches to literary studies. Each year, our stellar faculty of nationally and internationally renowned scholars offer a rich array of undergraduate and graduate courses which reflect the great breadth of literatures in English. Our undergraduate program offers students a historically informed and geographically diverse perspective on literature, while also developing writing and analytic skills. Students in our graduate program have the opportunity to engage a wide variety of critical and scholarly approaches to English literatures and cultures.

Cover page of Allegories of the Anthropocene

Allegories of the Anthropocene

(2019)

In Allegories of the Anthropocene Elizabeth M. DeLoughrey traces how indigenous and postcolonial peoples in the Caribbean and Pacific Islands grapple with the enormity of colonialism and anthropogenic climate change through art, poetry, and literature. In these works, authors and artists use allegory as a means to understand the multiscalar complexities of the Anthropocene and to critique the violence of capitalism, militarism, and the postcolonial state. DeLoughrey examines the work of a wide range of artists and writers—including poets Kamau Brathwaite and Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner, Dominican installation artist Tony Capellán, and authors Keri Hulme and Erna Brodber—whose work addresses Caribbean plantations, irradiated Pacific atolls, global flows of waste, and allegorical representations of the ocean and the island. In examining how island writers and artists address the experience of finding themselves at the forefront of the existential threat posed by climate change, DeLoughrey demonstrates how the Anthropocene and empire are mutually constitutive and establishes the vital importance of  allegorical art and literature in understanding our global environmental crisis.

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