Richard Watts

Richard Watts, Associate Professor of French, studies the ways in which global environmental change, particularly in the form of the water crisis, permeates narratives of the 20th Century and our contemporary moment. He teaches FREN 228/LIT 228 The Water Crisis in Literature and Cinema, which tracks the global response to drought, polluted waterways, m ega-dams, commodification, etc. through creative works (including sculpture, painting, music, landscape design). He is currently at work on a book-length project titled Water Narratives: Imagining Global Environmental Change in the Francophone Post/colonial World that consider through the critical lenses of postcolonial studies and the environmental humanities how the increasing scarcity of potable water is altering its previously stable symbolic value in literature, cinema, and other forms of cultural production.