Gillis Blue Humanities Forum: Chris Pastore
Historian Chris Pastore presents A Thousand Thousand Slimy Things.
What can the ocean’s most overlooked—and often unsettling—creatures teach us about environmental change? In this talk, Pastore invites the audience into the dynamic and often strange world of marine life, tracing the deep history of the Atlantic from prehistory to the present day. Drawing on his research as a social and cultural historian of early America and the Atlantic world, Pastore explores how humans have understood, interacted with, and transformed ocean environments over time.
Taking its title from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Pastore’s current project, A Thousand Thousand Slimy Things, reflects on the abundance and mystery of ocean life—from the “slimy creatures” that once inspired awe and unease to the complex ecological realities of today’s seas in an age of plastic pollution. Blending environmental history with vivid storytelling, this talk considers how shifting relationships between humans and marine ecosystems have shaped the Atlantic world—and what these histories might offer as we confront ongoing environmental change.
Chris Pastore is an Associate Professor of History at SUNY Albany. He is a social and cultural historian of early America and the Atlantic world with particular interest in the human dimensions of environmental change. He is drawn to salty spaces and fascinated by slimy creatures in the sea. Pastore is well known for 2014 his study of Naragansett Bay in Rhode Island from first European settlement in seventeenth century to industrialization in the mid-nineteenth century, Between Land and Sea: The Atlantic Coast and the Transformation of New England. His current research is about marine creatures and the Atlantic environment. Taking its title from lines in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” (1798), A Thousand Thousand Slimy Things examines the natural history of the seas from prehistory to the age of plastic pollution.
The Gillis Blue Humanities Forum is an interdisciplinary exploration of oceans, waterways, and aquatic life as central forces shaping culture, history, and environmental thought. Bringing together scholars, artists, and activists, the series invites audiences to rethink human relationships with water in an era of climate change and ecological urgency. This series was created in honor of John Gillis by his wife, Tina.