The Blue Humanities and Literary Immersions

Immersions in water produce a unique set of sensory events, mixing bodily encounters with both mundane and seeming alien stimuli, and showing in the process limit thresholds that define experience and perception. Literary representations of immersions are important in an age of climate change because of the crises that are developing in our relations with global waters: sea levels are rising, the biology and chemistry below the surface of our oceans are changing, patterns of rainfall and drought are becoming more violent, and our freshwater is increasingly under threat from our own poor management patterns and dietary choices. Focusing on work from Hemingway, Shakespeare, Amitav Ghosh, and others, this article shows that artistic representations of immersions reveal not only environmental issues but race and gender matters that have long been mixed with historical and literary drownings and that readings from Blue Humanities perspectives are both timely and important.