Over four lectures, author Amitav Ghosh highlights the literature, history, and politics of climate change and the role of writers in combating the issue.
Lecture 1
September 29, 2015
Fiction I
Amitav Ghosh explores the impact of global warming and climate change on fiction.
Lecture 2
September 30, 2015
Fiction II
Ghosh continues his exploration of global warming and climate change on fiction.
Lecture 3
October 6, 2015
History
Ghosh explores the impact of global warming and climate change on history.
Lecture 4
October 7, 2015
Politics
Ghosh explores the impact of global warming and climate change on politics.
Video
About Amitav Ghosh
Amitav Ghosh was born in Calcutta and grew up in India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. He received his BA and MA from the University of Delhi followed by a PhD in social anthropology from the University of Oxford. He is the author of The Circle of Reason, The Shadow Lines, In An Antique Land, Dancing in Cambodia, The Calcutta Chromosome, The Glass Palace, The Hungry Tide, and the Ibis Trilogy: Sea of Poppies, River of Smoke, and Flood of Fire.
The Circle of Reason was awarded France’s Prix Médicis in 1990, and The Shadow Lines won two prestigious Indian prizes the same year, the Sahitya Akademi Award and the Ananda Puraskar. The Calcutta Chromosome won the Arthur C. Clarke award for 1997 and The Glass Palace won the International e-Book Award at the Frankfurt book fair in 2001. In January 2005 The Hungry Tide was awarded the Crossword Book Prize, a major Indian award. Sea of Poppies was shortlisted for the 2008 Man Booker Prize and was awarded the Crossword Book Prize and the India Plaza Golden Quill Award. In recognition of his body of work, Ghosh was shortlisted for the 2015 Man Booker International Prize.
Ghosh’s writings have been translated into more than twenty languages and he has served on the jury of the Locarno and Venice Film Festivals. Ghosh’s essays have been published in the New Yorker, the New Republic and the New York Times. His essays have been published by Penguin India (The Imam and the Indian) and Houghton Mifflin USA (Incendiary Circumstances).
He has taught in many universities in India and the United States, including Delhi University, Columbia University, Queens College and Harvard University.
In January 2007, he was awarded the Padma Shri, one of India’s highest honors, by the President of India. In 2010, Ghosh was awarded honorary doctorates by Queens College, New York, and the Sorbonne, Paris. Along with Margaret Atwood, he was also a joint winner of a Dan David Award for 2010. In 2011 he was awarded the International Grand Prix of the Blue Metropolis Festival in Montreal.