W&L’s Mudd Center Presents Screening of ‘Anthropocene: The Human Epoch’ The Sept. 30 screening features the work of Edward Burtynsky, whose solo exhibition is on view at the Reeves Museum of Ceramics.

By Emily Innes Stanley
September 24, 2025

The Washington and Lee University Roger Mudd Center for Ethics presents a screening of “Anthropocene: The Human Epoch” at 7 p.m. on Sept. 30 in Stackhouse Theater in Elrod Commons.

The documentary screening is free and open to the public.

“Anthropocene” (2018) was created by the multiple-award-winning team of Jennifer Baichwal, Nicholas de Pencier and Edward Burtynsky. Burtynsky’s solo exhibition, “Taking Place,” is currently on view in the Reeves Museum of Ceramics and features large-format aerial photographs of global industrial landscapes. The documentary and Burtynsky’s exhibition are part of the Mudd Center for Ethics’ 2025-26 series, “Taking Place: Land Use and Environmental Impact.”

The documentary is a “cinematic meditation on humanity’s massive reengineering of the planet,” and is the third installment of a trilogy that includes “Manufactured Landscapes” (2006) and “Watermark” (2013). “Anthropocene” follows the research of the Anthropocene Working Group, an international body of scientists, and explores the concept of the Anthropocene Epoch, a geological epoch defined by the impact of humanity on the natural environment.

For more information and a complete schedule of events, visit the series webpage.

The Mudd Center was established in 2010 through a gift to the university from award-winning journalist Roger Mudd, a 1950 graduate of W&L. By facilitating collaboration across traditional institutional boundaries, the center aims to encourage a multidisciplinary perspective on ethics informed by both theory and practice. Previous Mudd Center lecture series themes have included “Global Ethics in the 21st Century: Challenges and Opportunities,” “Race and Justice in America,” “The Ethics of Citizenship,” “Markets and Morals,” “Equality and Difference,” “The Ethics of Identity,” “The Ethics of Technology,” “Daily Ethics: How Individual Choices and Habits Express Our Values and Shape Our World, “Beneficence: Practicing and Ethics of Care,” “The Ethics of Design” and “How We Live and Die: Stories, Values and Communities.”