We wish to extend hearty congratulations to Jordan Lovejoy for a stellar defense of her dissertation: Beyond the Flood: Environmental Memory, Precarity, and Creativity in Imagining Appalachia’s Livable Futures. 

Jordan has combined a consideration of regional literature featuring floods, local performance forms, memorializations and oral personal narratives of the 2001 Wyoming County flood to offer a complex portrait of rural Appalachians confronting climate change. She asks us to consider those whose livelihoods have already been battered by extreme weather events as offering equipment live in capitalist ruins. Shared experiences of disasters cultivate empathy among survivors that provides the potential for moving beyond ideological positions to work collectively toward livable futures. 

Katherine Borland, advisor, Tommy Davis and Dorry Noyes, committee members, were joined by Ulises Zevallos-Aguilar in the defense.