Byron Santangelo joined IU English in Fall 2021. And what a force he was! That semester he taught “Imagining Environmental Justice,” a course that spanned decades, continents, races, and theories in conceptualizing the ethics of environmental justice. Even though this would be the only graduate course he would teach at IU, it was enough for his students to rave about it for years, desperately seek out his mentorship and knowledge for the rest of his time, and to find any opportunity to weave his teaching into their own syllabi. Byron was such a light. Rarely are we lucky to cross paths with a mentor and scholar so compassionate, morally tenacious, curious, and equitable.

 

Early spring 2022, Byron was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer, Pancreatic Acinar Cell Carcinoma. For the rest of his time in Bloomington and in IU, Byron would brave through cancer’s many misgivings. Those years, though periodically (and rudely) badgered by his health, were not without their share of jokes, ideas, and travels. In his final years, Byron traveled to parts of Africa and Italy (courtesy of this splendid sunset photograph), grabbed many, many weekly lunches with Christoph Irmscher (his most beloved friend at IU), caught up with several longtime friends and family, and wrote some of his final scholarly contemplations on the genre of climate nonfiction.

 

Christoph remembers Byron, foremost, for his wit: “I wish I could adequately convey to you how funny Byron was. Here’s one of my favorite Byron texts, written from the airport, after a visit to see a doctor in New York City: ‘We are in Newark, sitting in the United Polaris lounge. My inner Marxist is screaming, but my battered body is grateful.’ To the end, there was no self-pity. If Byron set an example of scholarship done right in his work, the way he lived his life sets an example of how everyone should live theirs, though few of us likely can’t.”

 

Byron Santangelo was the author of two groundbreaking monographs, African Fiction and Joseph Conrad and Different Shades of Green. He was the editor of a stunning collection of essays, Environment at the Margins: Literary and Environmental Studies in Africa, featuring the who’s who of EJ studies: Rob Nixon, Laura Wright, Roderick Neumann, et. al. Byron tagged himself as a “nomadic intellectual,” collaborating with scholars across history, psychology, geography, and environmental studies. Before coming to IU, he spent a long career at Kansas University of over two decades.

 

For the short time his students and colleagues had with him at IU, Byron’s warmth, his deep intellectual curiosity, and his relentless commitment to justice served as a model of the best academia has to offer.