Exciting things are underway at the Humanities for the Environment initiative. Be sure to check out the website and like the group Facebook page.
Here’s some key information from their “About” page:
The urgent challenge being examined in Humanities for the Environment‘s ongoing research is to learn how to adapt to and live creatively in a torrentially changing world, a world where humans have adopted modes of life that have altered the longstanding physical forces of nature in extreme, unpredictable, yet radically unjust ways, on both local and global levels.
HfE receives its funding as part of the larger Integrating the Humanities Across National Boundaries $1.2 million Andrew W. Mellon Foundation grant to the Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes (CHCI). HfE explores how the humanistic disciplines contribute to understanding and engaging with the challenges of global environmental change by observing and exploring human actions and motivations, values, priorities, and habits. HfE activities, projects, publications, conferences, workshops, and events recognize the need to change and reevaluate human ideas about rights and responsibilities to resources and to recalibrate human strategies for adaptation and survival.
Its research projects are being conducted at three international observatories, the Australia-Pacific Observatory, the European Observatory, and the North American Observatory. The Australia-Pacific Observatory is led by Iain McCalman, Professorial Research Fellow and Australian Research Council Fellow at the University of Sydney. The European Observatory is led by Poul Holm, Trinity Long Room Hub Professor of Humanities at Trinity College Dublin.
The North American Observatory is c0-led by Joni Adamson, Professor of Environmental Humanities and Senior Sustainability Scholar, and Sally Kitch, Director of the Institute for Humanities Research and Regents’ Professor of Women and Gender Studies at Arizona State University.
Next week in Boulder, CO, the 2015 Conference on Communication and Environment will kick off. If you’ll be in the area you can still register on site to attend the conference, which runs June 11-14. Just click on the conference link for more information.
This year’s conference theme reflects the setting of the conference near the geographical Great Divide. Conference presenters will consider divides within the landscape of environmental and sustainability communication, and how those divides might be bridged:
Presenters will discuss such divides as those between:
- environmental communication theory AND practice
- scholars AND practitioners of environmental communication
- differing theories of change in environmental communication
- different environmental discourses
- advocacy intentions AND policy outcomes
- the many disciplines, arts and sciences that inform the field
- environmental attitudes AND behaviours
- aspirations for public participation AND actual opportunities
- media watchdogs AND media lapdogs
- environmental science knowledge AND actual public understanding
- cultures that see, experience, and value the world differently from each other
- communities facing environmental conflicts
- media representations AND environmental literacy
- different environmental, social, and cultural values
- differing political alternatives to address environmental issues
From a quick glance at the conference abstracts, it look like a great number of panels and presenters will focus on media texts and contexts, including photography, documentary film, and web-based communication.
A talented range of keynote speakers have been invited to present: Heather Ackroyd & Dan Harvey, Hunter Lovins, Susanne Moser, and Edward Maibach. For complete information click on this keynote speakers link.
The University for Peace in Costa Rica is hiring an Assistant Professor in Environment and Development for the coming academic year (beginning in August). English is the official language of the University, though proficiency in Spanish is desirable. They are principally looking for someone with a critical social science background who works on water governance and/or water security. Expertise in food/agriculture and/or climate change is also strongly desirable.
The deadline to apply is June 15th. More details can be found from the full job announcement here:
http://www.upeace.org/about-upeace/upeace-jobs-internships
<http://www.upeace.org/about-upeace/upeace-jobs-internships>
Assistant Professor in Environment and Development
Essential Qualifications:
1) Ph.D. with the thesis addressing a theme relevant to the field of Environment and Development, with an emphasis on social and political issues.
2) Minimum of three years of relevant teaching experience.
3) Distinguished record of research and publications.
4) Academic expertise and capability of teaching in the field of Environment and Development.
5) Fluency in English
Demonstrated capacity to teach in at least two of the following subjects:
– Water Governance
– Water Security
– Climate Change Governance
– Climate Change Adaptation
– Sustainable Agriculture
– Food Security
– Research Methods
Personal Suitability
Experience in multicultural or cross-cultural settings; capacity and interest to engage students from around the world; demonstrated initiative and a willingness to innovate; a strong team contributor; flexibility; and interest in engaging in practical action research and outreach activities,
to address relevant environmental issues. Close link to and desire to live in Costa Rica is desirable.
To Apply
Please submit (1) your CV, (2) a cover letter explaining your interest in the position, and how your teaching and research interests will contribute to the department and the UPEACE community, and (3) contact information for three references. Your references will only be contacted in the event you are selected as a finalist. Your application should be sent in electronic format to the following e-mail only: jobs@upeace.org, in reference to position #1100.
For questions about the position please contact Jan Breitling at breitling@upeace.org <mailto:breitling@upeace.org>
CFP for interdisciplinary collection of essays on Midwestern Regionalism. HC Press is a brand-new regionally themed academic press. Our first titles were released this spring and our web site will become active this summer. Please let me know if you have questions:
Hastings College Press welcomes proposals for chapters for an edited volume focused on Midwestern regionalism during the first half of the twentieth century. The volume is tentatively entitled “The Midwestern Moment: Essays in Early-Twentieth Century Midwestern Regionalism.†Midwestern regionalism includes writers, artists, publishers, intellectuals, architects, journalists, filmmakers, magazines, journals, institutions, films, etc. Subjects may include but are not limited to
• Midwestern regionalism as a movement to highlight work that was produced in the Midwest and focused on the Midwest as a counter to the cultural dominance of the coasts, especially Boston and New York City
• Individuals or institutions that purposely sought to encourage or counter the theory that Midwestern intellectuals and writers “revolted†from their Midwestern villages
• Representations of the Midwest in popular culture or by non-Midwesterners
• Rejection or confirmation of the Midwest as the agricultural Heartland
• Controversies about the definition or geographical boundaries of the Midwest
• Midwestern ecologies
Proposals should be roughly 300 words, briefly explain the significance of the subject chosen and sources available, and be sent to Patricia Oman at hcpress@hastings.edu. The editor of the volume will be Jon K. Lauck. All proposals are due by August 1, 2015. If a proposal is accepted, the resulting chapter, not exceeding 6,000 words (including notes), shall be due June 1, 2016.
By April Anson
University of Oregon, May 7-9th, 2015
As the first ever event of its kind, Rethinking Race and the Anthropocene marked an important methodological and epistemological moment in interdisciplinary work on environmental issues.
Bringing together scholars from diverse disciplinary backgrounds, community outreach activists, graduate students–and even one undergraduate presenter–the symposium consisted of four panels and structured conversations accompanying the two keynote presentations. Throughout the symposium, topics often moved between–and connected–the theoretical and the pragmatic. This began with rigorous investigation of the use value of the term “Anthropocene†itself to localized resilience efforts to bring university faculty and students together with communities to work against the slow violence of industrial waste.
Overall, the conference organizers hope to maintain a sustained cross-disciplinary conversation that focuses on the intersectionality of racializing and ecocidal systems, and their implications for work in the face of climate change, environmental toxicity, and social/environmental justice concerns. Below, I briefly summarize the panels, themes, and keynotes. Though I recognize no synopsis will be adequate to communicate the depth of exchange that took place, I do hope to re-seed some of the vision here.
From left to right: Panelists David Vázquez, Julie Minich, Naveeda Khan, Jennifer James, and J Bacon
Opening the symposium with a few framing comments, organizers Stephanie LeMenager, Marsha Weisiger, David Vázquez, and Sarah Wald each expressed excitement for the opportunity to think together about the relationships between race, environmental devastation, and anthropogenic climate change. Thursday hosted the first panel “Rethinking Race/Ethnicity in the Anthropocene†with Naveeda Khan (Johns Hopkins U), Julie Minich (U Texas Austin), J Bacon (U of Oregon), and Jennifer James (George Washington U). This panel coalesced around the strength of vulnerability, healing through recognition of pain, and the rhetoric of CO2lonialism. This conversation also contested the continued use of the term “Anthropocene,†identifying its homogenizing speciesism and implicit inattention to the importance of colonialism, capital, and slave labor to the economies of environmental destruction. The panel was followed by a keynote from Professor Julie Sze of UC-Davis, whose talk, “Environmental Justice, Visibility, and Recognition in the Anthropocene,†attempted to center a decolonial visual politics of the Anthropocene through recognizing that a failure to see is closely linked to a failure to act. Working within Rob Nixon’s slow violence and James Scott’s notion of “seeing like a state,†Sze argued that art has the potential to highlight the most unseen, most unknown elements of both slow and fast terror. Challenging a liberal politics of empathy and recognition, Sze emphasized the importance of a transformational empathy moving beyond acknowledgment to the importance of inequality, difference, and self-recognition. After her talk, Sze was joined by Kari Norgaard (U of Oregon), Nicolae Morar (U of Oregon), and Taylor McHolm (U of Oregon) for a structured conversation regarding how power works and ways of conceiving of justice beyond the distributive model.
Friday began with moderators Marsha Weisiger and Matt Dennis introducing the “Historical Perspectives on the Anthropocene†roundtable featuring Nancy Langston (Michigan Tech U), Robert Figueroa (Oregon State U), Bob Wilson (Syracuse U), and Dan Platt (U of Oregon). This panel covered the legacies of environmental collapse such as floods, as well as social justice movements in consideration with their attendant rhetoric, resettlement, and literary past. In order of mention, these scholars asked the audience to consider terms such as “restoration justice,†“environmental identities,†and the significance of Cornel West’s recent coinage of a “planetary Selma,†and also reimagine Moby Dick’s main character as Captain Anthropocene. Mark Carey and Stephanie LeMenager moderated the next panel, “Science and Climate Justice.†Presenters Megan Fernandes (Concordia U), Janet Fiskio (Oberlin College), Anne Nolin (Oregon State U), and Terry Hunt (U of Oregon) discussed representations of the Ebola outbreak and its connection (via outbreak and intimacy) to the phenomenon of the cat café in Japan, the persistence of plantation landscapes in continuing to structure the logics of disaster in Africatown, Alabama, and neoliberal economies both underlying and affected by climate change.
Friday’s symposium concluded with the commanding voice of artist and professor of visual arts at UC San Diego, Ricardo Dominguez. Dominguez discussed his history with the Electronic Disturbance Theater 1.0/2.0, the b.a.n.g. lab, and the Particle Group. Dominguez began by asking “Who put the “scene†in the Anthropocene?†and reminded the audience that “the anthrobscence and the capitalocene-Chthulucene†shows us that “life on this planet is one of planned obsolescence.†By rejecting utopia and apocalypse early on, Dominguez and his colleagues established the aesthetics of disturbance. Further, Dominguez presented recent work like the The Transborder Immigrant Tool, a global positioning system that becomes a geo-poetic system where poetry “dissolves†the US, and The Palindrone, which chases US border drones. Focusing on the transformative potential of art broadly conceptualized, Dominguez inspired the audience with his booming voice, unsettled notions of art and technology, and modeled recognition that a certain type of extinction must take place because “a certain type of people must become extinct.†Dominguez then participated in a structured conversation with Tara Fickle, Gerardo Sandoval, and Amy Harwood. I cannot speak for the entire audience, but I would be surprised if there was anyone in the room not changed by him.
The symposium concluded with the “Racial Justice and Indigenous Perspectives on Climate Justice†panel featuring PNW community organizers Sweetwater Nannauck (the leader Idle No More in Washington), Donita Sue Fry from Native American Youth and Family Center, and Vivian Satterfield, the Deputy Director at OPAL Environmental Justice Oregon. In fitting recognition of the importance of centering people of color and indigenous perspectives in discussions of environmental justice efforts, these women discussed the work they do – importantly declaring their endeavors be considered “activism†but cultural practice. Following a quote that has often accompanied the Idle No More movement, these women exemplify what it is to declare, “I am no longer accepting the things I cannot change, I am changing the things I cannot accept.â€
Let Rethinking Race and the Anthropocene continue to amplify that statement.
April as provocateur at the conference.
April Anson is a PhD student in Literature and the Environment at University of Oregon. Her work focuses on indigenous, environmental, and bio- politics in 19th Century American literatures, with secondary interests in scholarly activism and the tiny house movement.
If you’re headed off to see the new Mad Max film this weekend at your local cineplex, you’ll be sure to encounter a number of thematic issues related to environmental ethics. As in the original Mad Max films, director George Miller has set this film in a world plagued by environmental disruption, including oil and water shortages, species extinction, and climate change.
As Miller explained in a recent interview with the Sierra Club, “Everybody on the set had to start from the same ground rules,” Miller said, “which was that all the worst-case scenarios you read in the news have come to pass.”
However, when asked by reporter Steve Hawk, “Is there an environmental message hidden behind all the explosions and high-speed chase scenes, or were you just out to entertain?” Miller responded, “There is an environmental story, but it’s in the subtext. The sad thing is that it doesn’t really require much exposition for the audience to buy a degraded world, because we already see evidence of it happening all around us.”
Miller’s subtle dodge of the last part of Hawk’s question, speaks to a number of issues raised by ecocinema scholars over the past ten years about the role of mainstream narrative films in shaping and responding to cultural attitudes about environmental issues. I am reminded of David Ingram’s argument in his chapter for Ecocinema Theory and Practice that attributes meaning of such films largely to the cognitive interpretation of the film by individual viewers, not necessarily the content of the film itself. In other words, environmentality comes from how we interpret mainstream films far more than the intentions of the filmmakers. Let’s not forget, for Hollywood, the primary intention is always to make money, not teach lessons.
Although he eschews financial considerations, Miller’s suggestion that he is not out to set the ideological agenda for his audience confirms Ingram’s arguments about how we make (environmental) meaning from film:
Hawk: “You once said that movies like An Inconvenient Truth do little to change attitudes, because if you really want to motivate people, you have to touch their hearts and move them emotionally. Not just give facts.”
Miller: “There’s an interplay between the two. When you give someone a purely logical argument, you’re only involving the intellect. Which is fine in itself, but it’s not a story. A story touches the entire human being. It works with the viscera, with the intellect, and with the spirit. If a story is any good, it will follow you out of the theater. It will come back to you, and you will reflect on it. That’s my greatest hope as a storyteller, really. In the end, there’s no ideological agenda here. I’m just telling a story in response to the way that I perceive the world.”
On a personal note, in a discussion in a class on science fiction and environmental film I’m teaching at Oregon State University this term, my students generally agree that they prefer films that ‘don’t preach at us’ to more direct environmental messaging. ‘We’re beat over the head with environmental issues enough as it is,’ one student said. ‘Don’t preach at us too.’
Of course, what’s perhaps most concerning about Miller’s latest film isn’t the message audiences take away from the text, the actual environmental impact of the film on on the areas where it was filmed in the ecological sensitive desert of Namibia. Back in 2013, when only hard-core fans and industry insiders were following the film’s production, the film stirred up controversy for a short time over concerns that the film crew was tearing up the desert.
On March 5, 2013, Britain’s Guardian newspaper updated a story that was first circulated by a Nambian newspaper regarding the film’s impact on the ancient deserts of Namibia.
As reporter Natasya Tay writes in her article “Mad Max Fury Road Sparks Real-life Fury,” “The Namibian government was delighted when the director George Miller chose to shoot his post-apocalyptic sequel, Mad Max: Fury Road, starring Charlize Theron, in its country, bringing in 370m Namibian dollars (£27m) to the economy, employing about 900 local staff, and paying 150m Namibian dollar in taxes.”
“The film, the fourth Mad Max feature, was shot in the Dorob national park, in the Namib desert, along southern Africa’s Atlantic coast. Scientists estimate the area to be between 50m and 80m years old.
“A leaked environmental report claims film crew damaged sensitive areas meant to be protected, endangering reptiles and rare cacti.”
The original story published in The Namibian, “Mad Max Given Clean Bill of Health” back in February, 2013, Adam Hart reports that the controversy arose after a draft report on the film’s environmental impact was released. That report, written by ecologist Dr. Joh Henschel, had been commissioned by the film’s producers after concerns arose when the Nambian government granted the filmmakers permission to shoot in Dorob. While Henschel had reported some abuses, the commission “absolved the production team … of any environmental wrongdoing” and said in a media briefing that “the production did not violate any law in Nambia.”
The question remains whether the NFC (Namibia Film Commission) sought to cover up the damage in order to avoid controversy and maintain good public relations so as to bring more films to the country for the economic benefits they provide.
For her Guardian piece, Tay interviewed Henschel about the report and the commission’s response. Henschel’s report documents damage to rare cacti and reptiles, as well as damage to the pristine desert created by vehicles used for production. However, since Dorob had not yet been officially listed as a national part prior to the start of shooting, the filmmakers technically did not break any laws.
According to Tay, Henschel “said the film crews had driven over untouched areas of the desert, and then tried to erase their tracks by sweeping the area smooth.
“They are doing the best of what they can do under the circumstances, but they can’t undo the damage done, to the environment and their reputation,” he said.
“Henschel said the film studio had hired a scientific team of its own to deal with the situation.”
While the crew at least made an effort to fix some of the damage they had caused, the question remains for those of us interested in monitoring the environmental impacts of film and media production whether more stringent environmental regulations need to be imposed on on the studios by the industry itself.
Gwen Morgan is teaching a online course on Wildlife and Natural History Film this summer through LeMoyne College that is open to anyone interested. If you are interested in registering for the course you will need to contact The Center for Continuing Education at Le Moyne College at 315-445-4141 or email ceinfo@lemoyne.edu
Here is a complete description:
CMM 227 Wildlife and Natural History Films
Online Summer Course at Le Moyne College
Summer Session II July 6th- August 6th
This online course will survey major developments in the wildlife and natural history film genre. Students will explore the way in which these films have portrayed our changing relationship with wildlife and nature. We will conduct a close analysis and interpretation of the social function and cultural value of wildlife and natural history films. Emphasis will be placed on important wildlife filmmakers, including the role of filmmaker, the influence of technological developments, ethics in wildlife film-making, stewardship, and the changing landscape of wildlife and natural history film.
Robin L. Murray and Joseph K. Heumann have just created a new website – Ecocinema and Media – to further promote ecological cinema and media and ecocritical approaches to the genre film and media.
The site features a link to their popular blog, Ecocinema and Film Genre, information about their four books in the field, contact information, and more. The site looks to be another great addition to our growing field of discourse.