Chris Malcolm is Assistant Professor of Environmental Humanities and coordinator of the minor in Sustainable Ecosystems: Art & Design (SEAD) at Maine College. He teaches classes on how environments are visualized and conceptualized, especially with regards to histories of race, settler-colonialism and environmental justice.
Chris’s current research investigates the rhetorical and discursive effects that are produced when the contemporary understanding of the environment and its future is perceived of as marked by environmental harm. This project draws on a varied range of environmental artifacts including visual media, environmental management and assessments, reclamation projects, land art and ecocriticism. By focusing on multidisciplinary materials, and drawing from the fields of Indigenous Studies and Black Studies, this project articulates how the Environmental Humanities can be re-oriented theoretically and politically. Some of his recent publications include: “Environment and Loss,” Co-editor and article contributor for Special Issue in Yearbook of Comparative Literature (2021); “Eco-Complicity and the Logic of Settler-Colonial Environmentalism.” Resilience: A Journal of the Environmental Humanities, 7.2/3 (2020); “Environment as Consistent Relation,” review of Fredric Neyrat, The Unconstructble Earth: An Ecology of Separation. Postmodern Culture, 30.1 (2020); "Several Documents Pertaining to the Cascade Energy Park,” with Benedict, Hu, and Reuter. In Energy Culture: Art and Theory on Oil and Beyond (2019). Chris also regularly organizes panels and has presented at the American Comparative Literature Association and Association for Literature and Environment annual conferences.