A discussion of Ellen Wayland-Smith’s new book, The Science of Last Things: Essays on Deep Time and the Boundaries of the Self (Milkweed Press, October 2024). The author will be joined in conversation by Eula Biss (author of On Immunity) and Lochlann Jain (Stanford University), moderated by Maggie Nelson (USC). Registration is required. REGISTER HERE

About the Book: In this luminous collection of essays, Ellen Wayland-Smith probes the raw edges of human existence, those periods of life in which our bodies remind us of our transience and the boundaries of the self dissolve.

From the Old Testament to Maggie Nelson, these explorations are grounded in a rich network of associations. In an essay on the postpartum body, Wayland-Smith interweaves her experience as a mother with accounts of phantom limbs and Greek mythology to meditate on moments when pieces of our being exist outside our bodies. In order to comprehend diagnoses of depression and breast cancer, she delves into LA hippie culture’s love affair with crystals and Emily Dickinson’s geological poetry. Her experience with chemotherapy leads to reflection on Western medicine and its intolerance of death and the healing capacity of nature. And throughout, she challenges the false separation between the human and the “primeval, animal mode of being.”

At once intimate and expansive, The Science of Last Things peels back layers of human thought and behavior, breaking down our modern conceptions of individuality and reframing us as participants in a world of astounding elegance and mystery.

About the Author: Ellen Wayland-Smith is the author of Oneida and The Angel in the Marketplace. Her work has appeared in Guernica, Catapult, The Millions, Longreads, The American Scholar, and the Los Angeles Review of Books.

Open to attendants outside of USC. An excerpt of the book will be made available to registered attendants. Registration before the event is required. 

This event is part of the Levan Institute for the Humanities' “Book Chats” series, conversations about new books published by USC scholars in the humanities and humanistic social sciences. To see more events in this series, including recordings of past events, visit https://dornsife.usc.edu/levan-institute/book-chats/.