Christina Gerhardt

media release: A Room of One's Own is thrilled to welcome Christina Gerhardt for a conversation on her new book Sea Change: An Atlas of Islands in a Rising Ocean

This is an in person event at A Room of One's Own.

About Sea Change

This immersive portal to islands around the world highlights the impacts of sea level rise and shimmers with hopeful solutions to combat it.

Atlases are being redrawn as islands are disappearing. What does an island see when the sea rises? Sea Change: An Atlas of Islands in a Rising Ocean weaves together essays, maps, art, and poetry to show us—and make us see—island nations in a warming world.

Low-lying islands are least responsible for global warming, but they are suffering the brunt of it. This transportive atlas reorients our vantage point to place islands at the center of the story, highlighting Indigenous and Black voices and the work of communities taking action for local and global climate justice. At once serious and playful, well-researched and lavishly designed, Sea Change is a stunning exploration of the climate and our world's coastlines. Full of immersive storytelling, scientific expertise, and rallying cries from island populations that shout with hope—"We are not drowning! We are fighting!"—this atlas will galvanize readers in the fight against climate change and the choices we all face.

Christina Gerhardt is Associate Professor and Founder of the Environmental Humanities Initiative at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa, and Senior Fellow at the University of California at Berkeley. Previously, she was the Barron Professor in the Environment and the Humanities at at Princeton University. She has been awarded fellowships by the Fulbright Commission, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Newberry Library and the Rachel Carson Center. She has held visiting appointments at Harvard University, the Free University Berlin, Columbia University and the University of California at Berkeley, where she taught previously. She is also an environmental journalist and has been published (under "Tina Gerhardt") in Grist.org, The American Prospect, The Nation, The Progressive, Sierra and the Washington Monthly. Her most recent book is Sea Change: An Atlas of Islands in a Rising Ocean published by University of California Press.