Professor of Romance Studies and Comparative Literature
Karen Pinkus is Professor of Romance Studies and Comparative Literature at Cornell University. She is author of numerous works on Italian culture, film, architecture, and literary theory. Beginning in 2005, she has been one of the pioneers in the field of environmental humanities/climate change. Among her publications are Fuel: A Speculative Dictionary (2016), "Crystalline Basement," (e-flux, with artist Hans Baumann), and the forthcoming book Subsurface. For the Mellon Design Justice Workshop, she is especially interested in guiding students to think critically and speculatively about the right to the city, the politics of the archive, and the scale of climate justice. Pinkus has been a mentor to students of literature, cinema and media, architecture, studio art, anthropology, and environmental studies.