Wendy Wheeler’s lecture on Green Imaginaries: Biosemiotics, History, Memory and the Future, featured many interesting thoughts upon the natural world and its connection with the environment. Dr. Wheeler described the importance of complexity in nature and how ecocriticism is a great way to understand how the environment works. I thought it was engaging how Dr. Wheeler spoke about Lamarck in her talk especially because he believed that environmental stress is due to epigenetics, which “will cause permanent effects if the environment stays that way” (Dr. Wheeler). Dr. Wheeler described Epigenetics as a very intriguing topic due to the fact that environmental stressors can create changes in a species DNA. Continue reading →