Dr Jeremy Davies (University of Leeds)
Environmental Humanities Fellow, July - September 2018
Project: The Anthropocene Epoch and the Geologic Time Scale
Jeremy Davies is a lecturer in English at the University of Leeds. He is the author of Bodily Pain in Romantic Literature (Routledge, 2014) and The Birth of the Anthropocene (University of California Press, 2016). His IASH fellowship project is about the history and logic of the geologic time scale, the ‘calendar’ of Earth’s history. The proposed Anthropocene epoch is usually thought of as the ‘age of humans.’ In stratigraphic science, however, the Anthropocene can be understood very differently, as a part of the geologic time scale and hence as part of the unfolding temporality of the Earth. This project aims to clarify the nature and significance of that alternative view of the Anthropocene.