“The Missing Things People”
Friday, April 10, 2026
10 a.m. – 12 p.m.
Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities
In this era of climate disturbance, how do we decipher genres produced by increasing displacement and unhousing? How do we understand documents of loss? In this talk, I read lists of objects confiscated during sweeps of unhoused encampments—seizure medication, a thick coat, a Ziplock bag full of tampons, a clean pair of socks, Pampers, a Social Security card—in light of the literary history of the ode. Moving from Keats and Neruda to present heatwaves and Grants Pass vs. Johnson, I argue that these missing things are freighted with the kind of value best expressed in an ode. Their absence increases environmental risk, leaving unhoused residents of a city exposed to extreme temperatures, discomfort, and illness. But their absence also wrenches apart memories and meaning. Framing descriptions of these missing things in relation to the ode allows their loss to fully register, transforming a bureaucratic catalogue into poetic significance.
About Sarah Dimick
Sarah Dimick is an Assistant Professor of English at Northwestern University, jointly appointed in English and the environmental policy and culture program. Her research, based in Anglophone literatures of the 20th and 21st centuries, focuses on literary portrayals of climate change and environmental justice. Her first book, “Unseasonable: Climate Change in Global Literatures”, was published by Columbia University Press in 2024 and short-listed for the Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present Book Prize. She co-edits the University of Virginia Press’s Under the Sign of Nature series.