Eben Kirksey, Joao Biehl, and Bill Gleason will be discussing Mr. Kirksey’s book Emergent Ecologies(Duke $25.95) at Labyrinth Books on Wednesday, March 23 at 6 p.m. Emergent Ecologies uses artwork and contemporary philosophy to illustrate opportunities and reframe problems in conservation biology such as invasive species, extinction, environmental management, and reforestation. Following the flight of capital and nomadic forms of life — through fragmented landscapes of Panama, Costa Rica, and the United States — Mr. Kirksey explores how chance encounters, historical accidents, and parasitic invasions have shaped present and future multispecies communities. New generations of thinkers and tinkerers are learning how to care for emergent ecological assemblages — involving frogs, fungal pathogens, ants, monkeys, people, and plants — by seeding them, nurturing them, protecting them, and ultimately letting go.

According to Sarah Franklin, author of Biological Relatives: IVF, Stem Cells, and the Future of Kinship, “Emergent Ecologies is a great read. It is movingly written, methodologically innovative, and provides an intellectually rich account of an important and timely subject that will inspire, entertain, and challenge.”

Eben Kirksey is professor of Environmental Humanities at UNSW Australia and visiting lecturer at Princeton’s Environmental Institute. He is the editor of The Multispecies Salon and the author of Freedom in Entangled Worlds: West Papua and the Architecture of Global Power. João Biehl is professor of anthropology at Princeton University where he is also the co-director of Princeton’s Program in Global Health and Health Policy. He is the author of Vita: Life in a Zone of Social Abandonment and Will to Live: AIDS Therapies and the Politics of Survival. Bill Gleason is professor and department chair of English at Princeton University where he is also an affiliate of the Environmental Institute. He is the author of The Leisure Ethic: Work and Play in American Literature, 1840-1940 and of Sites Unseen: Architecture, Race, and American Literature.

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