Karen Pinkus is Professor of Romance and Comparative Literature at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York. She is also a faculty fellow of the Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future, Ithaca. Author of numerous publications in literary studies, Italian studies, critical theory, and environmental humanities, Pinkus is also Editor of the journal Diacritics. In her latest book, Fuel (2016), Pinkus thinks about issues crucial to climate change by arguing for a separation of fuel from energy as a system of power. Currently she is working on a book entitled Down There: The Subsurface in the Time of Climate Change, which sits between critical theory, literature, and geology.