“Why is it easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism?”
A quote often attributed to Fredric Jameson, who I first encountered in my English 131: Oceanic Humanities course last quarter. It’s not often that English and environmental or oceanic studies intersect so directly, yet that convergence opened up a way of thinking about literature, ecology and capitalism as deeply entangled forces.
Elizabeth DeLoughrey, a professor in both the UCLA English Department and the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, taught this course. Her work centers on postcolonial and Indigenous literature, with a particular emphasis on the Caribbean and Pacific Islands, foregrounding the intertwined forces of environmentalism, capitalism, critical ocean studies and the Anthropocene.
Over the course of ten weeks, she introduced a wide range of new concepts and frameworks that challenged conventional ways of thinking, offering a perspective in which literature, ecology and global systems are deeply interconnected terrains of inquiry.
BruinLife’s Edgar Corral had a conversation with Professor DeLoughrey, where they explored key ideas from her work, including the Anthropocene—the era shaped by human impact on the planet—and “The Deep,” a way of understanding the ocean as a site of history, memory and power. For Bruins interested in both postcolonial literature and oceanic studies, these concepts offer compelling ways to rethink how we read literature and engage with the world around us, especially in courses that bring ecology and culture into discussion.
BruinLife: ‘The Deep’ came up in multiple classes I’ve taken with you, and it seems to function as more than just a physical space—it’s memory, history and even a form of kinship. In your article “Kinship in the abyss: submerging with The Deep,” you describe it as both a site of ancestral violence and a generative ‘womb abyss’ that creates new forms of life and relation. How would you break down the concept of ‘The Deep’ for students encountering it for the first time?
Elizabeth DeLoughrey: Well, first I would hope students could take a 10-week class so we could just begin to skim the surface of the concept. One of the important starting points when thinking about the ocean is to approach it in a multi-scalar sense.
At one level, we think of it as universal — we live on a “planet ocean.” Rachel Carson, Sylvia Earle and Jacques Cousteau all emphasize that we carry a bit of the ocean within us, even at the cellular level. Some theorists describe this as the ‘hypersea’ — the idea that we are beings that emerged from the sea, and still carry it within us. Carson also reminds us that we are literally formed within a sea — the placenta — before emerging into air-breathing life. So even our biology reflects this deep evolutionary continuity between ocean and human life.
But there is also a culturally specific level that is equally important. For example, Édouard Glissant develops the concept of the ‘womb abyss’ to think about the Middle Passage and the violence of forced migration across the Atlantic. Here, the womb becomes both a space of birth and containment, while the abyss represents the unknown, the unfathomable depth. Glissant is interested in holding that tension — the paradox between creation and loss, emergence and disappearance — and I think that’s essential for thinking about the ocean itself. We have to hold both the universal and the culturally specific at the same time.
From there, we can turn to the idea of ‘The Deep.’ Until very recently, we simply didn’t have the technology to fully represent or access deep ocean space. In earlier European maps, the deep was imagined as unknown; sometimes terrifying, sometimes mythic. Today, however, it is increasingly charted and made visible through new technologies.
This growing knowledge of the deep brings new pressures. Mining companies are increasingly interested in these regions for extraction. So there is a real tension: the more we come to know about deep-sea life, origins and microbial networks, the more that knowledge also opens the door to potential ecological devastation.
BL: Gotcha. Thank you so much. I think ‘The Deep’ is very multifaceted and it’s so hard to encapsulate it in a very brief description.
ED: Right. So there’s a lot of intertwining between humanity or our beings and all these other things, from bacteria to Neanderthals. We would not be here without those networks intersecting like that.
BL: I know we also touched on Craig Santos Perez. We also did a lot with Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner, who I particularly loved, especially the poems “Dear Matafele Peinam” and “Tell Them.” I know we discussed Jetñil-Kijiner’s poetry as a way of understanding how environmental damage in places like the Marshall Islands is deeply tied to histories of colonialism and militarization. How would you say that her work expands the field of environmental humanities?
ED: So glad you share the enthusiasm for her — I find her work truly incredible. She helps us think in deeply complex, embodied ways, which is part of what makes her poetry so powerful. It draws attention to embodiment itself, helping us understand how we exist in relation to the world, not just as abstract thinkers but as living, situated beings.
One of the things we’ve also been discussing is how her work engages with terms like carbon colonialism and nuclear colonialism, concepts I’m grateful to Indigenous interlocutors in the Pacific for helping bring into scholarly conversation. While we often talk about empire and colonialism in broad terms, Western scholarship has not always fully accounted for their environmental dimensions—especially in relation to militarism.
That concern is central to her work. In the Pacific, militarism and environmental history are inseparable, and she foregrounds how histories of violence are often normalized or made invisible. For example, the region is frequently described in Western discourse as “islands in a far sea,” rather than, as Epeli Hauʻofa argues, a “sea of islands”—a shift that recenters Indigenous ways of understanding space and relation.
She also highlights how terminology like ‘Cold War’ obscures lived realities: for many Pacific communities, it was not cold at all, but a ‘hot war,’ marked by the ongoing impacts of nuclear colonialism. Between 1946 and 1962, the United States conducted 67 atmospheric and hydrogen bomb tests in the Marshall Islands alone, and the legacy of that testing continues to shape the present. These are American histories as much as they are Pacific histories, even if they are not widely recognized as such.
Part of her work, then, is a kind of historical intervention; teaching these histories as something that must be acknowledged and reckoned with. At the same time, she frames history itself as an ongoing project, much like interpretation in literature or art: something we continue to build through conversation and engagement.
What I also find powerful is the way knowledge is offered as a kind of gift. There is accountability in that exchange; when knowledge is given, it creates a form of responsibility and reciprocity in return. That idea of relational obligation is central to many Indigenous frameworks she draws from.
She extends this through performance and storytelling as well. In bringing personal and familial narratives into spaces like the United Nations, she reframes what that space is meant to be. Rather than only an international forum, it becomes an intergenerational one—one where care, family and future generations are made visible.
By including her daughter in that address, she makes the future tangible rather than abstract. Climate policy is no longer just about distant projections; it becomes about lived, embodied futures and the communities that will inherit them. At its core, her work insists on care as a political practice, one shaped by Indigenous and feminist traditions of relation, responsibility and attention to those most impacted by environmental change, particularly women and children.
In doing so, she also raises a critical question about global policy spaces: If those most affected by environmental harm are often not the ones shaping policy, then whose voices are being centered—and whose are still missing?
BL: Exactly. I really resonate with the reciprocity element of her poetry; although we can feel helpless, Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner gives us this information as a gift, and now we have this responsibility to immerse ourselves in it. You know, there just seems to be such a divide between STEM and, you know, being an English major. Almost like they’re completely different worlds, but they would actually intersect more than one would think.
ED: Yes. Yeah, absolutely. I think there are ways that we’re bringing that together at the Hammer Museum on May 21. We’ll do an event with some indigenous stewards, some oceanographic scientists, Rebeca Méndez, who is our artist, and then I’ll be on the panel on the humanities, again, to bring these conversations together to allow us to talk to each other.
BL: Amazing. Oh my gosh. You said May 21 for that?
ED: May 21, yes. That’ll be at the Hammer Museum, and then we’ll be screening Rosanna Xia’s “Out of Plain Sight”…she’s the environmental reporter for the LA Times, and it’s about how she broke the story about the DDT barrels. So, it’s all about reporting. We’ll have the workshops from 3 p.m. to 5:30 p.m., and then the screening is at 7:30 p.m. that night.
BL: Gotcha. Okay. Lots of exciting things!
ED: Yeah, yeah, a lot of things cooking!
The Hammer Museum will be hosting “The Sea Within Us: Caring for the Deep,” on Thursday, May 21 from 3 to 5:30 p.m. The special event will feature a symposium celebrating the 75th anniversary Rachel Carson’s award-winning book “The Sea Around Us,” co-presented with the UCLA Department of Design and Media Arts and the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability. The panel will address the legacy of DDT+, radioactive and industrial waste dumping off the coast of Southern California. Presenters will engage a diverse array of perspectives regarding ocean ecosystems, Indigenous stewardship and charting a pathway towards accountability through care for the deep.
A screening of Xia’s “Out of Plain Sight“ will follow at 7:30 p.m., along with a post-screening conversation with Professor DeLoughrey, UCLA Design and Media Arts Professor Rebeca Méndez and Rosanna Xia. The film focuses on the half a million barrels of toxic waste that have been quietly dumped into the ocean in the years after WWII, and the consequences that haunt us today.
On June 3, a screening of Professor Méndez’s cinematic experience “The Sea Around Us,” depicting the 500,000+ barrels of toxic waste dumped off Catalina Island and intertwining underwater footage, Indigenous songs and poetic storytelling, will take place at 7:30 p.m., with another post-screening conversation with Professor DeLoughrey and Xia afterwards.
All events listed have free admission and made possible by a Teaching and Learning Center Educational Innovation Grant.
For Bruins interested in Indigenous studies, oceanic humanities and environmentalism, these events will certainly be enjoyable experiences. Professor DeLoughrey encourages students further interested in research to get involved with the Student Research Program, or SRP. Through an SRP-99 course, Bruins can develop and pursue independent research projects in collaboration with UCLA faculty. This is a valuable opportunity to seek out mentorship, explore academic interests more deeply and get involved in research across disciplines.
