MARQUETTE — Northern Michigan University’s English Department will host a visiting scholar presentation titled “Brave New World and the Rise of the Factory Farm” by University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh Professor Stewart Cole. It is scheduled at 3 p.m. Friday in Peninsula I in the Northern Center.

Although Aldous Huxley’s 1932 dystopian novel Brave New World is widely recognized as a critique of consumerism, a portrait of state control and a cautionary bioethical fable, its significance as an ecological novel has gone under appreciated, according to an NMU news release.

Cole will demonstrate how Huxley’s novel engages with several early 20th-century developments, including assembly line production and advances in agricultural technology, that helped give rise to factory farming, one of the key drivers of global heating. Along the way, he will consider the importance of the environmental humanities for understanding and addressing the ecological crises of our time.

For more information, contact the English department at 906-227-2711.