The other day I was in the bleachers at a University of Mississippi baseball game on a beautiful sunny weekend afternoon. In front of me sat two women in their sixties, side by side, who did not get off their phones for the entire game. I don’t think they even glanced up. Hours of scrolling—social media, restaurant websites, even maps. (I have a strict no-phones policy at public events, so I was trying to avoid looking, but the glowing screens were right in my line of sight and I am also a distractible human citizen of the twenty-first century.) At one point there was a collision at first base, followed by a questionable call, followed by a review. The call went against us, at which point Phone Woman on the left yelled out—while still staring at her tiny screen—some boilerplate “Screw the ump/You’re blind!” rhetoric. I have no idea how...
It’s the End of the World and We Know It
Deanna Kreisel is associate professor of English and codirector of environmental studies at the University of Mississippi. She is author of Economic Woman: Demand, Gender, and Narrative Closure in Eliot and Hardy (2012) and editor, with Devin Griffiths, of a special issue of Victorian Literature and Culture titled “Open Ecologies” as well as the volume After Darwin: Literature, Theory, and Criticism in the Twenty-First Century (2022). She is working on a new book project about ecological mourning and utopia. Her website is https://www.deannakreisel.com.
Deanna Kreisel; It’s the End of the World and We Know It. Modern Language Quarterly 1 September 2024; 85 (3): 327–345. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/00267929-11196175
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