Facilitating Creative Climate Engagement
With Dr. Lorraine Affourtit, Department of Art
Friday, November 21, 3:00 – 4:30 pm
PSU 155 Tater Hill
Register here by November 18th
The Climate Stories Collaborative invites you to join us for this a ninety-minute interactive workshop for faculty and staff across the arts, humanities, and sciences who want to incorporate climate-related learning into their teaching. Rather than focus solely on climate science or policy, this session explores how creative practices—storytelling, visual thinking, embodied learning, and community engagement—can deepen students’ understanding of climate change and support meaningful action. Participants will encounter adaptable examples of low-stakes creative assignments and classroom exercises, then collaborate in small groups to design climate-related activities tailored to their own disciplines. No climate or arts expertise is required—only curiosity and a willingness to experiment. Leave with concrete teaching tools, fresh ideas, and potential collaborators for future course development.
SPEAKER BIO
Dr. Lorraine Affourtit is Assistant Professor of Art History and Visual Culture and Affiliate Faculty in the Gender, Women’s Studies, and Sexuality Studies program at Appalachian State University. She holds a Ph.D. in Visual Studies from the department of History of Art & Visual Culture at University of California, Santa Cruz, an M.A. in Interdisciplinary Humanities at San Francisco State University, and a B.F.A. from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Dr. Affourtit specializes in the contemporary visual culture of social movements in the Americas with a special focus on Latin America. Other teaching and research interests include visual semiotics, art activism, feminist movements, indigeneity, democracy studies, and decolonization.
Dr. Affourtit’s research has been published in Semiotics, the Journal of Labor Studies, Third Text, and the Ethnic Studies Review. She received research support from the Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Fellowship, a Visiting Fellowship from the Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies, and a Graduate Student Research Fellowship in Poverty, Inequality, and Democracy from the Blum Center for Global Poverty Alleviation and Sustainable Development.
Currently, Dr. Affourtit is working on her first book manuscript, The Visual Politics of Decolonial Democracy in the Oaxaca Commune.
