Image caption: The 2023 Visual Arts (VISA) Walker Cultural Leader Series featuring visiting artist Trudi Lynn Smith invited the Brock community to learn about environmental humanities research-creation methodologies. Organized by Elysia French, Assistant Professor of Visual Arts and presenter at the upcoming Humanities Research Institute Symposium, participants harvested amaranth from the VISA plot at Brock’s community garden to be used as artist materials in a subsequent workshop.
Wednesday, December 04, 2024 | by Gillian Minaker
The relationship between humanities scholarship, ecology and the environment will be front and centre at an upcoming event hosted by the Faculty of Humanities.
Taking place Monday, Dec. 9, the biannual Humanities Research Institute (HRI) Symposium will shed light on environmental humanities at the University and beyond, including a new minor open to all Brock students.
Elizabeth Vlossak, Associate Professor of History and Dean of Research and Graduate Studies, said the symposium will highlight the research endeavours of faculty members and graduate students working in this important field.
“Presentations will explore methodologies and teaching practices to address complex environmental issues,” she said.
Daniel Samson, Associate Professor of History, said environmental humanities is a sprawling, transdisciplinary field drawing together established areas such as cultural geography and environmental history alongside newer disciplines like ecocriticism and political ecology.
“Scientific fields are also interested in human roles in nature and exploring the relationship between nature and culture,” he said.
At the symposium, Samson will share his perspective on how he teaches environmental humanities through the lens of digital public history and 17th- and 18th-century Acadian and Mi’kmaw stories.
“My students are examining basic questions of resource extraction and sustainability. We can learn important lessons from historic populations on how to live more sustainably by, for example, learning how they produced food with lower energy use, made use of nutrient-rich saltmarshes or maintained healthy soils with manure,” he said.
At the same time, Samson said, the costs of sustainability need to be addressed. In the 18th-century colonial world of Isle Saint-Jean, present day Prince Edward Island, putting cattle on those marshlands meant destroying Indigenous people’s food resources such as eels and waterfowl.
“Environmental research usually poses scientific questions, but those questions are seldom free of human roles and human understandings,” he said.
Elysia French, Assistant Professor in the Department of Visual Arts (VISA), said environmental humanities has been building bridges between academic disciplines —specifically arts and science— for decades.
These bridges, French said, have paved the way for collaborative responses to pressing environmental and social issues.
“The interdisciplinary nature of environmental humanities facilitates new and exciting conversations and directs attention, both within and beyond the academy, toward critical environmental happenings shaping our world,” she said.
At the symposium, French will introduce her ongoing and collaborative project, Ecologies in Practice, which uses creative research methodologies such as arts-based work and podcasting to encourage greater public awareness about environmental issues.
“This area of knowledge matters as it supports collaboration and alternative methods of research-creation,” she said.
The symposium runs from 9 a.m. to noon on Dec. 9 in Sankey Chamber and includes the following presentations:
- “Literary Journalism and Ecocriticism” by Rob Alexander, Associate Professor of English Language and Literature
- “Find the Lad/y: An Ecofeminist Reads a Roman Garden” by Katharine von Stackelberg, Associate Professor of Classics and Archaeology
- “Separability and Cyclicity: Decoding the Logic of Temporal Representation through the Clock” by Liao Zixuan, PhD in Interdisciplinary Humanities candidate
- “Teaching/Doing Environmental Humanities: Mapping People, Animals and Resources on 18th-Century Isle Saint-Jean” by Daniel Samson, Associate Professor of History
- “A Work-in-Process: Collaborative and Creative Methodologies in the Environmental Humanities” by Elysia French, Assistant Professor of Visual Arts
The symposium will culminate in a panel discussion addressing the present and future of Environmental Humanities at the University. The Brock and wider community are invited to attend all presentations and the discussion panel with no registration required.