Cogut Institute for the Humanities

Environmental Humanities 2021-22

The initiative for Environmental Humanities at Brown hosted four public events during 2021–22. The first, a showcase of research by faculty and students connected to EHAB, invited the ongoing participation of the Brown academic community.

The second two events, both held in the late fall, featured prominent environmental humanities authors. The Boston Book Fair partnered on “After ‘Nature Writing,’” which brought together five authors to imagine new alternatives to writing about nature that break free of the dominant narratives of resource conservation. Then in “Is Climate Democracy Possible?” legal scholar and cultural commentator Jedediah Purdy argued that the climate crisis could be solved only by addressing the crisis of democracy simultaneously. Recordings of both events are available to watch on YouTube.

The last event of the year was also the first EHAB program to be held in person and brought author Carolyn Finney to campus for a hybrid presentation and performance titled “The N Word: Nature, Revisited (An Imagined Conversation with John Muir) — A Work-in-Progress.” Through a blend of autobiography, family history, and cultural criticism, Finney explored the complex relationship between the natural world and race. 

Throughout the year, the EHAB reading group also discussed a variety of themes: fungi and oceans in the fall and, in the spring, topics intersecting with contemporary social issues, including disability, colonialism, migration, and afrofuturism.

  •  Location: Cogut Institute, Pembroke HallRoom: 102

    Concluding the semester, the EHAB Reading Group synthesized themes and objects that they had engaged throughout the academic year: underwater oceans, energy extraction, race, slavery, and history. The group discussed Rivers Solomon’s 2019 novella The Deep, inspired by the work of the hip-hop group clipping originally featured in This American Life.

    Readings:

    The Environmental Humanities Reading Group is part of the Initiative for Environmental Humanities at Brown (EHAB). This hybrid session was coordinated by Brown University doctoral student Max Conley.

  •  Location: Cogut Institute, Pembroke HallRoom: 305

    Carolyn Finney, Ph.D., is a storyteller, author, and cultural geographer grounded in both artistic and intellectual ways of knowing. She pursued an acting career for 11 years, but five years of backpacking trips through Africa and Asia and living in Nepal changed the course of her life. She returned to school to complete a B.A., an M.A., and a Ph.D., exploring the intersection of environmental issues with race and gender. Her first book, Black Faces, White Spaces: Reimagining the Relationship of African Americans to the Great Outdoors (UNC Press) was released in 2014. She is currently working on a new book, a more personal journey into the complicated relationship between race, land, and belonging in the United States. She is also working on a performance piece titled The N Word: Nature Revisited as part of an Andrew W. Mellon residency at the New York Botanical Gardens Humanities Institute. Alongside her work with writing, public speaking, media engagements, consulting, and teaching, she served for eight years on the U.S. National Parks Advisory Board. Currently, she is a columnist at Earth Island Journal and an artist-in-residence in the Franklin Environmental Center at Middlebury College, and she was recently awarded the Alexander and Ilse Melamid Medal from the American Geographical Society.

    This free, public event was presented by the Cogut Institute’s Initiative for Environmental Humanities at Brown (EHAB) and sponsored by the Sponsored by the Charles K. Colver Lectureships and Publications.

    Image credit: Photo by Nicholas Nichols

  •  Location: Cogut Institute, Pembroke HallRoom: 102

    Alongside terms like “anthropocene,” the notion of “invasive,” “non-native,” or “alien” species, a notion associated most prominently with the field of ecology, has provided fertile and often contentious ground for thinking across fields in the sciences and humanities.

    The readings for this session of the EHAB Reading Group ranged from conservation, invasion, and evolutionary plant biology to feminist science studies, history, and American studies and offered a chance to think through these real and figurative “migrations” across borders, nations, disciplines, and methodologies, especially in light of how interspecies rhetorics were shaping discourses on COVID-19 and anti-Asian racism.

    Readings:

    • Daniel Simberloff, “Non-Native Species and Novel Ecosystems,” F1000Prime Reports 7, no. 47 (2015): 1–7.
    • Banu Subramaniam, “Geographies of Variation: The Case of Invasion Biology,” in Ghost Stories for Darwin: The Science of Variation and the Politics of Diversity (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2014): 93–156.
    • Jeannie N. Shinozuka, “Deadly Perils: Japanese Beetles and the Pestilential Immigrant, 1920s–1930s,” American Quarterly 65, no. 4 (2013): 831–852.

    The Environmental Humanities Reading Group is part of the Initiative for Environmental Humanities at Brown (EHAB). This hybrid session was coordinated by Brown University doctoral student Max Conley.

  •  Location: Cogut Institute, Pembroke Hall 202

    For its March session, the EHAB Reading Group addressed recent humanities scholarship framed around the overlapping themes of “deep time,” “fossils,” and “geology.” The three readings highlighted in the session focused on the relationships between geologic ideologies, timeframes, and conceptualizations of resource extraction and histories of European imperialism and anti-Black racism.

    Readings:

    • Kathryn Yusoff, A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2018): Ch. 1: “Geology, Race, and Matter.” p. 1–23.
    • Ryan Cecil Jobson, “Dead Labor: On Racial Capital and Fossil Capital,” in Histories of Racial Capitalism, edited by Destin Jenkins and Justin Leroy (New York: Columbia University Press, 2021): p. 215–230.
    • On Barak, Powering Empire: How Coal Made the Middle East and Sparked Global Carbonization (Oakland: University of California Press, 2020), Ch. 6: “Fossil.” p. 194–224.

    The Environmental Humanities Reading Group is part of the Initiative for Environmental Humanities at Brown (EHAB). This hybrid session was coordinated by Brown University doctoral student Max Conley.

  • Although recent years have seen a proliferation of thinking about how environmental injustice and ecological crises intersect with various forms of oppression and social identity, relatively little attention has been given to the intersections between disability studies and the environmental humanities.

    For its first meeting of 2022, the EHAB Reading Group discussed this issue, using a short piece by the disability and environmental studies scholar, artist, and activist Sunaura Taylor as a launching point.

    Reading:

    The Environmental Humanities Reading Group is part of the Initiative for Environmental Humanities at Brown (EHAB). This virtual session was coordinated by Brown University doctoral student Max Conley.

  •  Location: Pembroke HallRoom: 202

    At this session, the EHAB Reading Group focused on the subject of oceans.

    Readings:

    • Alice te Punga Somerville, “Where Oceans Come From,” Comparative Literature 69, no. 1 (2017): 25-31.
    • Hal Whitehead and Luke Rendell, “Mammals of the Ocean,” in The Cultural Lives of Whales and Dolphins (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015), 53-66 (chapter 3).
    • Stacy Alaimo, “Oceanic Origins, Plastic Activism, and New Materialism at Sea,” in Material Ecocriticism, eds. Serenella Iovino and Serpil Oppermann (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2014), 186-203.

    The Environmental Humanities Reading Group is part of the Initiative for Environmental Humanities at Brown (EHAB). This virtual session was coordinated by Brown University faculty member Brian Lander.

  • The challenges that the climate crisis presents to democracy are deep and worrisome. We need to think about the climate crisis and the crisis of democracy together to see how climate change calls into question our ability to rule ourselves.

    Jedediah Purdy is the author of After Nature (Harvard University Press, 2015) and This Land Is Our Land (Princeton University Press, 2019), among other books. Born and raised in West Virginia, he taught at Duke and lived for 15 years in North Carolina before becoming the Beinecke Professor of Law at Columbia University. He serves on the editorial board of Dissent and has written for many law reviews and for publications including The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New York Times, n+1, The New Republic, and Jacobin.

    This free public event was presented by the Cogut Institute’s Initiative for Environmental Humanities at Brown (EHAB) and sponsored by Charles K. Colver Lectureships & Publications.

    Watch video on YouTube
  •  Location: Cogut Institute, Pembroke HallRoom: 003

    The inaugural EHAB Reading Group session of the 202122 academic year focused on fungi. The group also discussed thematic content for future sessions. 

    Session readings:

    • Merlin Sheldrake, Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures (New York: Random House, 2020), introduction.
    • Anna Tsing, “Unruly Edges: Mushroom as Companion Species,” Environmental Humanities1 (2012): 141–54.
    • Jan Mun, “The Fairy Rings @ ExxonMobil Greenpoint Petroleum Remediation Project Site,” https://janmun.com/fairy-rings-mycoremediation2/ (open access)

    The Environmental Humanities Reading Group is part of the Initiative for Environmental Humanities at Brown (EHAB). This virtual session was coordinated by Brown University faculty member Brian Lander.

  • The 21st century’s mounting environmental crises—from toxics to extinction to a warming climate—make it crucial to free environmental writing from the gaze of the “Lone Enraptured Male” in Kathleen Jamie’s phrase.

    At this event, a panel of scholars and writers considered the themes, topics, and formal elements that environmental writers could bring to their storytelling, how to handle or tell stories that support political action, and how to link issues of justice and equality with the histories, presents, and futures of our shared, changing environment.

    Panelists:

    Kerri Arsenault, journalist and memoirist
    Kate Brown, environmental historian (MIT)
    Bathsheba Demuth, environmental historian (Brown University)
    Joan Naviyuk Kane, poet (Tufts University/ Institute of American Indian Arts)
    Tony Perry, environmental historian (Smithsonian Institution)

    Read about these and other Boston Book Festival presenters at https://bostonbookfest.org/festival/presenters/.

    This free, public event was a collaboration between the Cogut Institute’s Initiative for Environmental Humanities at Brown (EHAB) and the Boston Book Festival.

    Watch video on YouTube
  • At this event, Bathsheba Demuth, Assistant Professor of History and Environment and Society, hosted brief presentations of research and teaching by both faculty and student members of the initiative, and gave a preview of forthcoming events.

    Presenters included Mark Cladis (Religious Studies), David Frank (Philosophy), Nancy Jacobs (History), Brian Lander (History and Institute at Brown for Environment and Society), Lukas Rieppel (History), Ada Smailbegovic (English), undergraduate student Ella Spungen, and graduate student Chloe Zimmerman (Literary Arts).

    This free, public event was presented by the Cogut Institute’s Initiative for Environmental Humanities at Brown (EHAB).

Banner image: Cactus in bloom during Texas rural summer sunset, by ccestep8 on Adobe Stock