About this program
J. M. W. Turner's seascapes demonstrate how his engagements with water—as subject, substance, and perhaps even collaborator—explore how humans coexist with one of the most alien features of our environment. From beaches to boats, mists to waterfalls, Steve Mentz argues that Turner presents water as a challenge to human ideas of order. The intersection of Turner and the “blue humanities,” which recently developed a critical language for relationships between human culture and water in all its forms, resonates for those of us who live near—and in Mentz’s case, swim in—Long Island Sound during an age of rising sea levels.
About Steve Mentz
Steve Mentz is professor of English at St. John's University in New York City. Over the past two decades he has been a major voice in developing the “blue humanities” as a set of ideas and methods for understanding human relationships with water in all its forms. His books include An Introduction to the Blue Humanities (2023), Sailing without Ahab: Eco-poetic Travels (2024), Ocean (2020), Break Up the Anthropocene (2019), Shipwreck Modernity (2015), and At the Bottom of Shakespeare's Ocean (2009). He has also published dozens of articles, book chapters, and public essays on ecocriticism, oceanic literature, Shakespeare, swimming, eco-poetics, and the literary cultures of the Anthropocene. He lives in Short Beach, Branford, where he swims every day in Long Island Sound. He blogs at the Bookfish and occasionally posts on Bluesky and X.
Art in Context
Presented by faculty, staff, student guides, and visiting scholars, these gallery talks focus on a particular work of art in the museum’s collections or special exhibitions through an in-depth look at its style, subject matter, technique, or time period.
Top image
Joseph Mallord William Turner, Landscape with Waterfall, ca. 1796, watercolor, graphite and gray wash on paper, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection
