Member Profile

Stephen Siperstein

Member

Semi-finalist

20

15

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Screen Name	ssiperstein	Activities	13
Member Since	Jul 19, 2014	CoLab Points (actual) CoLab Points are awarded to all the members who contributed to a winning integrated Proposal, as well as those who contributed to any sub-Proposal it contains.(See more)	0
Country	United States	CoLab Points (max. potential) The maximum number of CoLab Points this member could receive. This is a measure of how many times the member’s Proposal have been included in other Proposal and how important it is in those Proposal.(See more)	0

I am a PhD candidate and instructor in the Department of English at the University of Oregon, where I teach courses in writing, literature, and environmental studies, including courses in environmental and climate change literature.  I have been teaching at the college level for the past six years and taught for two years in a private high school before that.  I am also trained through NOLS as an outdoor educator.  In all my teaching, whether it takes place in a classroom or in a high mountain meadow, I strive to help students (re)connect to the places that they are from and to tell and share stories of those places.  I am a firm believer in the power of storytelling, and of narrative in general, to help people connect to places, communities, and ecologies.  Being able to read, write, and share stories is an important step in achieving ecological consciousness. 

In my current research project, which builds on my teaching interests, I am studying and curating the many literary and artistic responses to climate change, with a particular focus on the different kinds of narratives that people use to make sense of the climate crisis.  In particular, I am interested in the different kinds of emotional and cognitive work that various genres of climate change narrative (like apocalyptic narratives, pastoral narratives, speculative narratives, etc.) can perform.  The Climate Stories Project is a crucial intervention as it opens up a space for more people to tell their climate change narratives.  This is so important because we need to empower people to feel like climate change is not only the domain of climate “experts,” but is something that affects everyone.  It is also important that telling climate change stories is collaborative, fun, and—dare I say—beautiful, all things that the Climate Stories Project aims to achieve. 

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