environmental humanities essay

The Environmental Humanities at UCLA

What is the environmental humanities.

The term “environmental humanities” is both descriptive and aspirational: it has emerged over the last five years to capture already existing conjunctions across environmental philosophy, environmental history, ecocriticism, cultural geography, cultural anthropology, and political ecology, but it also seeks to integrate debates so far largely shaped by different disciplinary contexts. This Sawyer seminar at UCLA aims to explore the potential of this concept for organizing humanistic research, for opening up new forms of interdisciplinarity both within the humanities and in collaboration with the social and natural sciences, and for shaping public debate and policies on environmental issues.

Awareness of ecological crisis made its way into individual humanistic disciplines at different moments, depending on the compatibility of environmental thought with prevailing theoretical frameworks. Environmental philosophy (particularly ethics) developed robustly from the 1970s onward, environmental history emerged in the 1980s as a distinct subdiscipline, and ecocriticism (that is, environmentally oriented literary and cultural studies) established itself institutionally from the early 1990s onward.

While the environmental humanities are too diverse in terms of method, subject, and geographical focus to make broad generalizations that hold true across all of them, environmentally focused subfields within different humanities disciplines have been shaped by some similar intellectual turns since the 1970s. Chief among these is a shift from championing and explaining environmentalist thought to challenging environmentalists to reflect more carefully on their concepts of nature and on the relationship between nature and culture.

For example, in Nature’s Economy (1977), one of the books that helped establish the field of environmental history, Donald Worster grants a holistic vision of nature a privileged place in the history of ecology, thereby endorsing a popular environmentalist view of the science of ecology. But by 1995, William Cronon was challenging mainstream environmentalist definitions of nature in “The Trouble with Wilderness,” where he argued that the focus on wilderness preservation leads us to neglect of the everyday places in which we live.

A similar shift can also be traced in ecocriticism, from sympathetic analyses of Romantic representations of nature in British and American poetry and nonfiction nature writing in the early years, to a more recent turn toward issues of environmental justice, other world literatures and global environmental contexts, urban natures, and texts that are not obviously environmental.

Institutional coalescence

While literary scholars and historians in the United States and environmental philosophers and literary critics in Australia have cultivated contact and collaboration with each other’s communities since the 1990s, the idea that environmentally oriented humanistic research should be integrated in a more sustained fashion has only taken hold in universities around the world over the last decade.

Recently established research centers such as the Center for Culture, History, and Environment at University of Wisconsin-Madison, the Rachel Carson Center in Munich, the KTH Environmental Humanities Laboratory in Stockholm, and the Eco-Humanities Hub  at Mid Sweden University are bringing scholars from the associated fields together. Undergraduate and graduate programs in environmental humanities have emerged at universities in the United States, Australia, England, Germany, Sweden, and Taiwan.

Networks such as  Humanities for the Environment , the Transatlantic Environmental Research Network in Environmental Humanities , the Australian Environmental Humanities Hub, the Nordic Network for Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies (NIES) , and the European Environmental Humanities Alliance , in addition, help to connect researchers in the environmental humanities regionally across institutions and disciplines.

One new journal, Environmental Humanities , based at the University of New South Wales in Australia, began publishing in November 2012; another, Resilience: A Journal of the Environmental Humanities , from University of Nebraska Press, published its first issue in January 2014.

Audiences and resources

Like environmentalist writing more broadly speaking, the environmental humanities occupy a fertile edge zone between academic and popular discourses. Classic environmental thinkers such as Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, Aldo Leopold, and Rachel Carson played a mediating role, communicating insights from natural history and the environmental sciences to a popular audience, but also explaining popular concerns and experiences to a scholarly audience.

In a similar way, scholars in the environmental humanities both respond to and influence popular representations and accounts of our current ecological predicaments. The immense popularity of writers who often translate insights from the environmental humanities for a general audience—think of Michael Pollan, Bill McKibben, and Barbara Kingsolver, just to name a few—only begins to indicate the extent to which academic conversations are enriched by exchange with popular discourses and practices.

A seismic shift in environmental thought

While the emergence of the environmental humanities has been shaped by debates within a variety of disciplinary contexts, by growing frustration within the environmental movement at the slow pace of political responses to climate change, and by pressures on the humanities to prove their social usefulness, a seismic shift in environmentalist thought currently underway both outside and inside the academy is likely to crucially shape research in the environmental humanities.

Environmentalism up until the turn of the millennium tended to envision the ideal kind of nature as the one least altered by humans. But climate change as well as historical inquiry regarding indigenous people’s manipulation of landscapes have made this ideal once and for all unattainable. Not only had many of the environments that especially European settlers considered “wild” or “pristine” already been fundamentally transformed by indigenous peoples for millennia before Europeans’ arrival, but the pervasive impact of global warming also makes return to the ecosystems of the past difficult or impossible.

Under such varied headings as “domesticated nature,” “intervention ecology,” and, perhaps most famously, the idea of the “Anthropocene,” an era in which humans’ impact on the planet has attained geological magnitude, environmentalists are re-envisioning nature as pervasively and enduringly shaped by humans. These new concepts are beginning to put pressure on the key concept of “sustainability,” which has organized a good deal of environmentalist thought for the last two decades.

This fundamental conceptual shift in environmentalism is likely to give the environmental humanities many of its crucial impulses in the immediate future, since nature itself, more than before, will come to be considered as part of social and cultural realms.

Two other intellectual turns are relevant here. One is posthumanism, a move to de-center the liberal human subject in relation to other species, machines, objects, and systems. The other is a growing dissatisfaction with declension narratives—doubt about the accuracy and public appeal of stories of nature’s decline under the impact of modern societies.

These trends challenge not only environmental scholarship but deep humanistic traditions as well. Taken together, they also offer a difficult but potentially rewarding path forward for the humanities.

A few other recent definitions of the environmental humanities

Deborah Bird Rose, Thom van Dooren, Matthew Chrulew, Stuart Cooke, Matthew Kearnes, and Emily O’Gorman. “Thinking through the Environment, Unsettling the Humanities.” Environmental Humanities 1.1 (2012): 1-5.

Sverker Sörlin. “Environmental Humanities: Why Should Biologists Interested in the Environment Take the Humanities Seriously?” BioScience 62.9 (2012): 788-789.

Vilnius Declaration: the European Environmental Humanities Alliance . September 20, 2013.

A few classic texts in chronological order

Leo Marx. The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America . New York: Oxford UP, 1964. Thirty-Fifth Anniversary Edition, 2000.

Alfred Crosby. “New World Foods and Old World Demography” from The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492. 1972. 30 th Anniversary Edition. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003. 165-207.

Raymond Williams. The Country and the City . New York: Oxford UP, 1973.

Sherry Ortner. “Is Female to Male as Nature is to Culture?” In Woman, Culture, and Society . Ed. Michelle Zimbalist Rosaldo and Louise Lamphere. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1974.

Ramachandra Guha. “Radical American Environmentalism and Wilderness Preservation: A Third World Critique.” Environmental Ethics 11.1 (1989): 71-83. Reprinted in Technology and Values: Essential Readings . Ed. Craig Hanks. Sussex, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010.

Bruno Latour. “Crisis” from We Have Never Been Modern . 1991. Trans. Catherine Porter. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1993. 1-12.

William Cronon. “The Trouble with Wilderness; Or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature.” In Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature . Ed. William Cronon. New York: Norton, 1995. 69-90.

Ramachandra Guha and Juan Martínez-Alier. “The Environmentalism of the Poor” from Varieties of Environmentalism: Essays North and South . Oxon, UK: Earthscan, 1997. 3-21.

Donna Haraway. “Modest­_Witness@Second_Millennium,” from Modest_Witness@Second_Millennium.Female Man © _Meets_ OncoMouse™:  Feminism and Technoscience . New York: Routledge, 1997. 23-48.

Lawrence Buell. “Toxic Discourse.” Critical Inquiry  24.3 (1998): 639-665 .

Val Plumwood. “The Politics of Ecological Rationality,” from Environmental Culture: The Ecological Crisis of Reason . New York: Routledge, 2002. 62-80.

The Environmental Humanities : A Critical Introduction

Robert Emmett is Visiting Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies at Roanoke College and author of Cultivating Environmental Justice: A Literary History of U.S. Garden Writing .

David E. Nye is Senior Research Fellow at the University of Minnesota's Charles Babbage Institute and Professor Emeritus of American Studies at the University of Southern Denmark. The author of twelve books with the MIT Press, including American Technological Sublime , he was awarded the Leonardo da Vinci Medal in 2005 and was knighted by the Queen of Denmark in 2013.

A concise overview of this multidisciplinary field, presenting key concepts, central issues, and current research, along with concrete examples and case studies.

The emergence of the environmental humanities as an academic discipline early in the twenty-first century reflects the growing conviction that environmental problems cannot be solved by science and technology alone. This book offers a concise overview of this new multidisciplinary field, presenting concepts, issues, current research, concrete examples, and case studies. Robert Emmett and David Nye show how humanists, by offering constructive knowledge as well as negative critique, can improve our understanding of such environmental problems as global warming, species extinction, and over-consumption of the earth's resources. They trace the genealogy of environmental humanities from European, Australian, and American initiatives, also showing its cross-pollination by postcolonial and feminist theories.

Emmett and Nye consider a concept of place not synonymous with localism, the risks of ecotourism, and the cultivation of wild areas. They discuss the decoupling of energy use and progress, and point to OECD countries for examples of sustainable development. They explain the potential for science to do both good and harm, examine dark visions of planetary collapse, and describe more positive possibilities—alternative practices, including localization and degrowth. Finally, they examine the theoretical impact of new materialism, feminism, postcolonial criticism, animal studies, and queer ecology on the environmental humanities.

• Permissions
• Cite Icon Cite

The Environmental Humanities : A Critical Introduction By: Robert S. Emmett, David E. Nye https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/10629.001.0001 ISBN (electronic): 9780262342292 Publisher: The MIT Press Published: 2017

Download citation file:

• Ris (Zotero)
• Reference Manager

Table of Contents

• [ Front Matter ] Doi: https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/10629.003.0013 Open the PDF Link PDF for [ Front Matter ] in another window
• Acknowledgments Doi: https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/10629.003.0001 Open the PDF Link PDF for Acknowledgments in another window
• 1: The Emergence of the Environmental Humanities Doi: https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/10629.003.0002 Open the PDF Link PDF for 1: The Emergence of the Environmental Humanities in another window
• 2: Place, Ecotourism, and the New Wilds Doi: https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/10629.003.0003 Open the PDF Link PDF for 2: Place, Ecotourism, and the New Wilds in another window
• 3: Energy, Consumption, and Sustainable Cities Doi: https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/10629.003.0004 Open the PDF Link PDF for 3: Energy, Consumption, and Sustainable Cities in another window
• 4: Promises and Dangers of Science Doi: https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/10629.003.0005 Open the PDF Link PDF for 4: Promises and Dangers of Science in another window
• 5: The Anthropocene’s Dark Visions Doi: https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/10629.003.0006 Open the PDF Link PDF for 5: The Anthropocene’s Dark Visions in another window
• 6: Putting the Brakes On: Alternative Practices Doi: https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/10629.003.0007 Open the PDF Link PDF for 6: Putting the Brakes On: Alternative Practices in another window
• 7: Unsettling the Human Doi: https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/10629.003.0008 Open the PDF Link PDF for 7: Unsettling the Human in another window
• 8: Conclusions Doi: https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/10629.003.0009 Open the PDF Link PDF for 8: Conclusions in another window
• Notes Doi: https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/10629.003.0010 Open the PDF Link PDF for Notes in another window
• Bibliography Doi: https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/10629.003.0011 Open the PDF Link PDF for Bibliography in another window
• Index Doi: https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/10629.003.0012 Open the PDF Link PDF for Index in another window
• Open Access

A product of The MIT Press

Mit press direct.

• About MIT Press Direct

Information

• Accessibility
• For Authors
• For Customers
• For Librarians
• Direct to Open
• Media Inquiries
• Rights and Permissions
• For Advertisers
• About the MIT Press
• The MIT Press Reader
• MIT Press Blog
• Seasonal Catalogs
• MIT Press Home
• Give to the MIT Press
• Direct Service Desk
• Terms of Use
• Privacy Statement
• Crossref Member
• COUNTER Member  
• The MIT Press colophon is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office

This Feature Is Available To Subscribers Only

Sign In or Create an Account

Environmental Posthumanities

• Reference work entry
• First Online: 29 November 2022
• Cite this reference work entry

• Christine Daigle 7  

1329 Accesses

This chapter offers an overview of prominent subfields within the environmental humanities and posthumanities, such as environmental philosophy and environmental ethics, critical animal studies and multispecies studies, (material) ecocriticism, and the blue humanities, while placing an emphasis on those that more clearly align with the recent posthumanist renewed attention to matter and “our” entanglements. The chapter explores the various ways in which the relation between the human and the nonhuman and the relation between the human and nature as a whole have been construed. The environmental posthumanities embrace the posthumanities’ inter- and transdisciplinary critique of humanist concepts using methods and narratives from different disciplines and contemplating different objects and beings as texts. One concept under sustained critique is the human exceptionalism that grounds oppressive regimes which, in relation to the environment and nonhuman animals, justify extractive and destructive practices that have led to the Anthropocene and the 6th mass extinction event. Environmental posthumanities also reject the notion of the human as sole and autonomous agent and places it in the midst of entangled relations and a wide net of distributed agentic capacities. The chapter also delineates key ethical positions such as multispecies ethics and permaculture ethics of care whereby the human is definitively decentered while still having a duty to care. Finally, storytelling – philosophical, literary, artistic, or otherwise – is presented as a key method in bringing to life the challenges and experiences faced by the many beings – biotic and abiotic – inhabiting this world.

• Environment
• Human/nonhuman distinction
• Nonhuman turn
• Biotic/abiotic

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

• Available as PDF
• Read on any device
• Instant download
• Own it forever
• Available as EPUB and PDF
• Durable hardcover edition
• Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
• Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Alaimo, S. (2010). Bodily natures: Science, environment, and the material self . Indiana University Press.

Google Scholar  

Alaimo, S. (2016). Exposed: Environmental politics and pleasures in posthuman times . University of Minnesota Press.

Book   Google Scholar  

Alaimo, S. (2019). Introduction. In Alaimo S. (Ed.), Science studies in the blue humanities . Special issue of Configurations. A Journal of Literature, Science, and Technology, 27 (4), 429–432.

Alaimo, S., & Hekman, S. (Eds.). (2008). Material feminisms . Indiana University Press.

Åsberg, C. (2020). A sea change in the environmental humanities. Environmental humanists respond to the world scientists’ warning to humanity . Special issue of Ecocene. Cappadocia Journal of Environmental Humanities, 1 (1), 108–122.

Barad, K. (2007). Meeting the universe halfway: Quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning . Duke University Press.

Bennett, J. (2010). Vibrant matter. A political ecology of things . Duke University Press.

Bignall, S., & Rigney, D. (2019). Indigeneity, posthumanism and nomad thought. Transforming colonial ecologies. In R. Braidotti & S. Bignall (Eds.), Posthuman ecologies. Complexity and process after Deleuze (pp. 159–181). Rowman & Littlefield.

Bonneuil, C., & Fressoz, J.-B. (2016). The Schock of the Anthropocene: The Earth, history and us . Verso.

Bookchin, M. (1980). Toward an ecological society . Black Rose Books.

Braidotti, R. (2013). The posthuman . Polity.

Braidotti, R. (2018). A theoretical framework for the critical posthumanities. Theory Culture and Society, Special Issue: Transversal Posthumanities, 1–31.

Braidotti, R. (2019). Posthuman knowledge . Polity.

Buchanan, B. (2017). Bear down. Resilience and multispecies ethology. In U. K. Heise, J. Christensen, & M. Niemann (Eds.), Routledge companion to the environmental humanities (pp. 289–297). Routledge.

Carson, R. (1962). Silent spring . Hamish Hamilton.

Chakrabarty, D. (2009). The climate of history: Four theses. Critical Inquiry, 35 (2), 197–222.

Article   Google Scholar  

Chen, M. Y. (2012). Animacies. Biopolitics, racial mattering, and queer affect . Duke University Press.

Cielemęcka, O., & Daigle, C. (2019). Posthuman sustainability: An ethos for our Anthropocenic future. Theory, Culture & Society, 36 (7–8), 67–87.

Colebrook, C. (2014). Death of the PostHuman. Essays on extinction (Vol. 1). Open Humanities Press.

Colebrook, C. (2016). What is the Anthropo-political. In T. Cohen, C. Colebrook, & J. H. Miller (Eds.), Twilight of the Anthropocene idols . Open Humanities Press.

Coole, D., & Frost, S. (2010). New materialism: Ontology, agency, and politics . Duke University Press.

Crutzen, P. J., & Stoermer, E. F. (2000). The ‘Anthropocene’. IGBP Newsletter, 41 , 17–18.

Davis, H. (2015). Toxic progeny: The plastisphere and other queer futures. In Colebrook, C., & Weinstein, J. (Eds.), Anthropocene feminisms: Rethinking the unthinkable . Special issue of philoSOPHIA. A Journal of Continental Feminism, 5 (2), 231–250.

Frost, S. (2016). Biocultural creatures: Toward a new theory of the human . Duke University Press.

Gaard, G. (Ed.). (1993). Ecofeminism: Women, animals, nature . Temple University Press.

Gaard, G. (2011). Ecofeminism revisited: Rejecting essentialism and re-placing species in a material feminist environmentalism. Feminist Formations, 23 (2), 26–53.

Garrard, G. (2004). Ecocriticism . Routledge.

Garrard, G. (2014). Introduction. In G. Garrard (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of ecocriticism (Oxford handbooks online 2018) (pp. 1–26). Oxford University Press.

Hamilton, J. M., & Neimanis, A. (2018). Composting feminisms and environmental humanities. Environmental Humanities, 10 (2), 501–527.

Han, L. (2019). The blue frontier: Temporalities of salvage and extraction of the seabed. In Alaimo, S. (Ed.), Science studies in the blue humanities . Special issue of Configurations. A Journal of Literature, Science, and Technology , 27 (4), 463–481.

Haraway, D. J. (2003). The companion species manifesto: Dogs, people, and significant otherness . Prickly Paradigm Press.

Haraway, D. J. (2016). Staying with the trouble. Making kin in the chthulucene . Duke University Press.

Heise, U. K. (2016). Imagining extinction. The cultural meanings of endangered species . The University of Chicago Press.

Heise, U. K. (2017). Introduction. Planet, species, justice – and the stories we tell about them. In U. K. Heise, J. Christensen, & M. Niemann (Eds.), Routledge companion to the environmental humanities (pp. 1–10). Routledge.

Chapter   Google Scholar  

Hird, M. J. (2010). Indifferent globality. Gaia, symbiosis and ‘other worldliness’. Theory, Culture & Society, 27 (2–3), 54–72.

Hird, M. J. (2013). Waste, landfills, and an environmental ethic of vulnerability. Ethics & the Environment, 18 (1), 105–124.

Hird, M. J. (2017). Proliferation, extinction, and an Anthropocene aesthetic. In J. Weinstein & C. Colebrook (Eds.), Posthumous life: Theorizing beyond the posthuman (pp. 251–269). Columbia University Press.

Hird, M. J., & Yusoff, K. (2019). Lines of shite. Microbial-mineral chatter in the Anthropocene. In R. Braidotti & S. Bignall (Eds.), Posthuman ecologies. Complexity and process after Deleuze (pp. 265–281). Rowman & Littlefield.

Iovino, S., & Oppermann, S. (2014). Introduction. Stories come to matter. In S. Iovino & S. Oppermann (Eds.), Material ecocriticism (pp. 1–17). Indiana University Press.

Johnson, L. (2009). Greening the library: The fundamentals and future of ecocriticism. Choice, 2009 , 7–13.

Jones, B. (2019). Bloom/split/dissolve: Jellyfish, H.D., and multispecies justice in Anthropocene sea. In Alaimo, S. (Ed.), Science studies in the blue humanities. Special issue of Configurations. A Journal of Literature, Science, and Technology , 27 (4), 483–499.

Kolbert, E. (2014). The sixth extinction: An unnatural history . Henry Hold.

Kueffer, C., Lässer, K. T., & Hall, M. (2017). Applying the environmental humanities: Ten steps for action and implementation . Swiss Academic Society for Environmental Research and Ecology (SAGUF)/Swiss Academy of Humanities and Social Sciences (SAHS).

Latour, B. (2017). Facing Gaia. Eight lectures on the new climatic regime . (Porter, C., Trans.). Polity.

Leopold, A. (1949). A sand county Almanac . Oxford University Press.

Lovelock, J. (1979). Gaia. A new look at life on Earth . Oxford University Press.

MacCormack, P. (2012). Posthuman ethics. Embodiment and cultural theory . Routledge.

McCance, D. (2013). Critical animal studies. An Introduction . SUNY Press.

Morton, T. (2013). Hyperobjects. Philosophy and ecology after the end of the world . University of Minnesota Press.

Naess, A. (1989). Ecology, community, lifestyle (Rothenberg, D., Trans. and Ed.). Cambridge University Press.

Neimanis, A., Åsberg, C., & Hayes, S. (2015a). Post-humanist imaginaries. In K. Bäckstrand & E. Lövbrand (Eds.), Research handbook on climate governance (pp. 480–490). Edwards Elgar.

Neimanis, A., Åsberg, C., & Hedrén, J. (2015b). Four problems, four directions for environmental humanities: Toward critical posthumanities for the Anthropocene. Ethics & the Environment, 20 (1), 67–97.

Oppermann, S. (2019). Storied seas and living metaphors in the blue humanities. In Alaimo, S. (Ed.), Science studies in the blue humanities . Special issue of Configurations. A Journal of Literature, Science, and Technology, 27 (4), 443–461.

Parikka, J. (2019). Cartographies of environmental arts. In R. Braidotti & S. Bignall (Eds.), Posthuman ecologies. Complexity and process after deleuze (pp. 41–60). Rowman & Littlefield.

Plumwood, V. (1993). Feminism and the mastery of nature . Routledge.

Povinelli, E. A. (2016). Geontologies: A requiem to late liberalism . Duke University Press.

Puig de la Bellacasa, M. (2017). Matters of care. Speculative ethics in more than human worlds . University of Minnesota Press.

Regan, T. (1983). The case for animal rights . Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Rose, D. B. (2012). Multispecies knots of ethical time. Environmental Philosophy, 9 (1), 127–140.

Rose, D. B., van Dooren, T., Chrulew, M., Cooke, S., Kearnes, M., & O’Gorman, E. (2012). Thinking through the environment, unsettling the humanities. Environmental Humanities, 1 , 1–5.

Rossini, M., & Toggweiler, M. (Eds.). (2017). Posthuman temporalities . Special issue of New Formations , 92.

Schneiderman, J. S. (2017). The Anthropocene controversy. In R. Grusin (Ed.), Anthropocene feminism (pp. 169–195). University of Minnesota Press.

Singer, P. (1975). Animal liberation. A new ethics for our treatment of animals . Random House.

Sorenson, J. (Ed.). (2014). Critical animal studies: Thinking the unthinkable . Canadian Scholars’ Press.

Tsing, A., Swanson, H., Gan, E., & Bubandt, N. (Eds.). (2017). Arts of living on a damaged planet . University of Minnesota Press.

Van Dooren, T. (2014). Flight ways. Life and loss at the edge of extinction . Columbia University Press.

Van Dooren, T., Kirksey, E., & Münster, U. (2016). Multispecies studies. Cultivating arts of attentiveness. Environmental Humanities, 8 (1), 1–23.

Warde, P., Robin, L., & Sörlin, S. (2018). The environment. A history of the idea . Johns Hopkins University Press.

Warren, K. J. (1994). Ecological feminism . Routledge.

Watts, V. (2013). Indigenous place-thought and agency amongst humans and non-humans (First woman and sky woman go on a European world tour!). Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, 2 (1), 20–34.

Yusoff, K. (2015). Queer coal: Genealogies in/of the blood. In Colebrook, C., & Weinstein, J. (Eds.), Anthropocene feminisms: Rethinking the unthinkable . Special issue of philoSOPHIA. A Journal of Continental Feminism, 5 (2), 203–229.

Zalaziewicz, J., Williams, M., Steffen, W., & Crutzen, P. (2010). The new world of the Anthropocene. Environmental Science and Technology, 44 (7), 2228–2231.

Download references

Acknowledgments

The author thanks the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies at the University of Helsinki for its support. This chapter was authored while the author was working there as a Core Fellow during her sabbatical leave from Brock University.

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Department of Philosophy, Posthumanism Research Institute, Brock University, St. Catharines, ON, Canada

Christine Daigle

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Christine Daigle .

Editor information

Editors and affiliations.

Heidelberg University, Heidelberg, Germany

Stefan Herbrechter

Department of English, Faculty of Arts, University of Malta, Msida, Malta

Ivan Callus

Basel, Switzerland

Manuela Rossini

University of Malta, Msida, Malta

Marija Grech

University of Southampton, Winchester, UK

Megen de Bruin-Molé

Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia

Christopher John Müller

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this entry

Cite this entry.

Daigle, C. (2022). Environmental Posthumanities. In: Herbrechter, S., Callus, I., Rossini, M., Grech, M., de Bruin-Molé, M., John Müller, C. (eds) Palgrave Handbook of Critical Posthumanism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-04958-3_29

Download citation

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-04958-3_29

Published : 29 November 2022

Publisher Name : Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

Print ISBN : 978-3-031-04957-6

Online ISBN : 978-3-031-04958-3

eBook Packages : Literature, Cultural and Media Studies Reference Module Humanities and Social Sciences Reference Module Humanities

Share this entry

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

• Publish with us

Policies and ethics

• Find a journal
• Track your research

Environmental humanities at UCI

In the environmental humanities, we bridge the traditional divide between the sciences and humanities to look holistically at the past and present’s environmental problems. We investigate not only historical and ecological facts but also the underlying human factors that drive collective behaviors and beliefs. We also look at the stories we tell—and write our own—knowing that facts alone will not motivate the change our world needs. We need to evolve a new human narrative as well. 

The environmental humanities explore cultural productions, like literature, art, film and media, as well as history and philosophy, to understand the ways nature and the environment are referenced and depicted. Through this examination, environmental humanities scholars can trace and track how attitudes about nature have shifted over time as well as across geography, religions and knowledge systems.

Questions we ask in the environmental humanities include: how can we account for human beliefs and culture when creating climate-change solutions? How are questions of social justice entangled with environmental issues? How do various cultures around the globe relate to the natural world and the place humans have in it? What role might eco-documentaries play in chronicling and challenging reliance on fossil fuels or nuclear power?

At UCI, our research in the environmental humanities is deep , with scholars diving beneath the surface to help understand today’s challenges; radical , with scholars getting to the roots of complex problems; creative , with scholars imagining new approaches and drawing lessons from nature; and engaged , with scholars encouraging new ways of thinking and taking action.

In the humanities, our scholars work from a toolbox that includes critical analysis, cultural attunement, storytelling, historical context, and deep interpretation of human beliefs and motivations. These tools are vital to solving the dynamic and multifaceted environmental issues of today. Sometimes, it’s as simple as being the voice at the table to ask, “Good for whom?” and “At whose expense?”

What follows is a multimedia tour of the multidisciplinary cadre of UCI Humanities scholars tackling environmental humanities research today.

Tyrus Miller Dean, UCI School of Humanities

What are the environmental humanities?

Explained by uci experts..

UCI launches Environmental Humanities Research Center

Multidisciplinary center addresses our century's most pressing issue: climate change, uci's environmental humanities are:.

Deep: Diving beneath the surface

Uci's proximity to the ocean makes it an ideal site to study the humanistic impact of the earth's most integral source of life. from orange county to san francisco, our scholars study the stories that emerge from california's diverse coastline. from the sunny waves of the pacific to the dark history of the atlantic, researchers take a close look at how humans relate to the sea. for the 2020-2021 academic year, the uci humanities center sought to foster understanding of how the waterways of the world have shaped humanities-based inquiry and cultural production through a series of lectures and research projects ..

Radical: Getting to the root

Ecological and humanitarian crises often collide, and the humanities are crucial to understanding their origins. from heavy metal pollution to drought to climate change, humanities scholars can provide invaluable context needed to understand environmental histories and implement effective, equitable solutions..

Creative: Drawing lessons from nature

Art historians and visual scholars investigate more than just paint strokes. they examine art in nature and study artists who incorporate natural materials and environmental concerns into their artworks..

Engaged: Facing the crisis

The looming threat of climate change is the most critical issue of our century. that's why, in 2019, the humanities-led forum for the academy and the public hosted the interdisciplinary conference " fire & ice: the shifting narrative of climate change ," which invited renowned environmental writers like bill mckibben and elizabeth kolbert to share their stories. humanities scholars have also been instrumental in increasing awareness of environmental issues at uci and in the greater community through regularly organized events, podcasts and other outreach efforts., environmental humanities champions, uci humanities students and alumni transform a wide variety of fields, including in environmental issues. from work in environmental policy, sustainable fashion, non-profit advocacy and more, their work will impact generations. below are their stories..

• Aras Baskauskas
• Barbara Hamilton
• Aditi Mayer
• Heather Repenning
• Arielle Sidney

B.A.s English and literary journalism '18

Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby ends, famously, with a car crash. Kerouac’s On the Road and Nabokov’s Lolita are novels framed by ambitious, cross-country road trips. Some of the most famous American literature of the 20th century revolved around cars, roads, oil, gasoline and the ways they became constitutive of American life. In the age of climate change, how can we disentangle the feelings we have long associated with fossil fuels – freedom, speed, independence – from their environmentally devastating repercussions?

In her “ecocritical” literary research, english ph.d. student megan cole is attempting to find out. through a humanistic framework, cole hopes to understand how fossil fuels became ingrained in american culture throughout the twentieth century, and how fiction might enable us to envision more sustainable, socially just ways of living in the future., along with her research, cole is currently working with solutions that scale, a uci initiative working to identify and implement scalable and equitable solutions to climate change. with a team of uci faculty collaborators including chemists, public health experts and sociologists, cole will soon publish a white paper about how humanists can help climate scientists imagine and implement effective, equitable solutions to the climate crisis..

“Literary studies – and critical theory in particular – ask us to pay attention to cultural attitudes and assumptions that often go unexamined. I hope that by thinking critically about the world we inhabit and the cultural artifacts we’re surrounded by, we can not only discover how climate change came to be, but, hopefully, how to envision a way out of the crisis.”

B.A. Philosophy '03

Aras Baskauskas is co-founder and CEO of fashion label Christy Dawn, which he started with his wife, Christy Baskauskas. Founded in 2013, the label features vintage-inspired women’s clothing that is handcrafted in Los Angeles using repurposed excess fabric from larger fashion factories.

“what are we trying to sustain – the fires, the tornadoes, the mass extinction” baskauskas said in an interview with vogue . “we don’t need to be sustainable, we need to be regenerative.”, with a commitment to “being part of the solution,” the label grows its own cotton by supporting farmers using regenerative practices. for the past couple years, christy dawn has collaborated with a regenerative cotton farm in kanjikoil, tamil nadu, india, where they’re employing farmers who transform acres of bare, chemical-stripped land into lush fields – avoiding pesticides and focusing on promoting biodiversity to nourish the soil, microorganisms, insects, animals and humans. , from those 24 acres alone, in 2020, there was enough to make 6,500 dresses and 2,000 unisex t-shirts, numbers that challenge the assumption that organic and regenerative farming produce small, insufficient yields. the farm sequestered 66 tons of co2, or seven tons per hectare, averaging 22 pounds of carbon per dress., after earning a b.a. in philosophy, baskauskas also attained an mba at uci, and now merges his marketing expertise with a critical understanding of how systemic forces perpetuate environmental crises., b.a. russian language, culture and civilization '87.

Energy-intensive equipment, endless single-use plastics and harmful chemicals course through American hospitals and clinics every day. The medical industry hasn’t always been the most environmentally conscious – but as UC San Diego Health’s sustainability officer, UCI alumna Barbara Hamilton is working to change that.

While earning her b.a. in russian language, culture and civilization at uci – a major she chose after spending several years in the u.s. army as a russian linguist – hamilton became interested in ecological issues and went on to earn an m.a. in environmental policy and management. inspired as an undergraduate by uci’s commitment to sustainability, she decided that she wanted to help lead the environmentalist charge at another university of california campus., as uc san diego health’s first sustainability officer, hamilton oversees the implementation and evaluation of sustainable solutions. some of her team’s past projects have included phasing out an environmentally harmful strain of anaesthetic gas, replacing thousands of hospital light bulbs with leds, implementing proper waste segregation procedures and promoting recyclable packaging and surgical wrap. hamilton is proud of her role in advancing the uc’s carbon neutrality and sustainability goals but maintains that the highlight of her work is “supporting the smart, kind, strong, humble people [of ucsd health] – they really care about health and the environment, and they want to do more. it’s inspiring.”.

“In the School of Humanities, we were exposed to art and music, literature and ideas, philosophies and frameworks through which stories are told, civilizations are built and viewed. I believe this well-rounded understanding of people and societies underlines that there are universal truths and shared human desires and that everything really is connected. In order to work in sustainability, one must be passionate and empathetic. Understanding the beauty and the brutality of humankind and nature through the arts and across time illustrates our strength and ability to adapt and to be the best we can be, for ourselves and for all of life on earth. It is hard but rewarding work.”  

B.A. literary journalism '19

“Fast fashion” may be cheap and convenient, but the multibillion-dollar industry is notoriously unsustainable. Fast fashion companies produce more than 1 billion garments annually, many of which wind up in landfills. As of 2020, garment factories caused more carbon emissions than all maritime shipping and international flights combined. While some fashion influencers have promoted this culture of rapid apparel consumption, UCI alumna Aditi Mayer is using social media to do just the opposite: Over the past decade, she has been in the trenches of an ethical, socially just and environmentally conscious fashion revolution.

As a first-year literary journalism major at uci, mayer learned about the 2013 rana plaza disaster, the deadly collapse of a bangladeshi garment factory producing clothing for some of the world’s leading fast fashion brands. the tragedy catalyzed mayer’s career as an award-winning blogger, influencer, photojournalist and writer-activist working to challenge unsustainable and unethical practices in the apparel industry – especially those impacting garment workers, who are disproportionately women of color., among her other endeavors, mayer recently joined the council of intersectional environmentalist, a nonprofit working to benefit communities of color impacted by environmental injustice. this summer, she will attend the state of fashion biennale as a member of its creative council – and afterwards, as the recipient of a fulbright-national geographic digital storytelling fellowship, mayer will head to india to study agrarian and artisan movements related to textile production and to collect local narratives about social and environmental justice in the fashion industry..

“ Studying the humanities has helped me understand the importance of storytelling and radical imagination in the age of climate catastrophe. At its core, the climate catastrophe is a crisis of a dominant world view that asserts there is only one way – and that way has been predicated upon extraction and exploitation. The humanities must remind us of alternative worldviews, centering marginalized communities, questioning the domains of ‘credibility’ and shifting into a framework that centers lived experience. All of this naturally bleeds into the world of decentering whiteness, decolonizing environmentalism and equipping a generation of diverse storytellers to challenge the narrative. ” 

M.A. comparative literature '01

Heather Repenning is the executive officer of sustainability policy at LA Metro where she provides policy strategy and research to improve sustainability outcomes, such as clean air and clean water and to reduce climate emissions through the agency’s role in providing transportation services to Los Angeles County. 

She also serves on the board of directors for the metropolitan water district, which supplies water directly or indirectly to 26 agencies and 19 million people in los angeles, orange, riverside, san bernardino, san diego and ventura counties.  , repenning is the former vice president of the city of los angeles board of public works, overseeing the bureaus of sanitation, engineering, street services, street lighting and contract administration., repenning previously served as director of external affairs for mayor garcetti, managing intergovernmental and community advocacy for the city of los angeles, including in sacramento and washington, d.c., ph.d. history '21.

In 2018, after discovering potentially dangerous levels of lead in soil samples collected across the City of Santa Ana, a group of UCI scientists teamed up with two local activist groups – Orange County Environmental Justice (OCEJ) andJóvenes Cultivando Cambios – to begin monitoring and tackling the pollution at its source. But before these scientists, environmentalists and public health experts could fully understand the origins and social impacts of the soil-lead crisis, they needed to enlist a different kind of scholar-activist: That’s where historian Juan Rubio came in.

Rubio earned his history ph.d. from uci in 2021 but began work on the soil-lead project while he was still a graduate student. using his archival research and historical mapping skills, rubio discovered that the areas with the highest lead levels in santa ana often overlapped with the locations of roads built before the 1970s, when cars were still fueled by leaded gasoline. traffic patterns have since changed, but decades-old traces of lead remain., rubio, now a mellon humanities faculty fellow, and his collaborators will soon publish their research paper about the connection between historical roads and contemporary soil-lead contamination in santa ana. these findings are important, rubio says, “because they challenge a whole paradigm of thinking about lead science and lead-poisoning prevention.” by revealing the social and historical origins of environmental crises – from heavy metal pollution to climate change – rubio hopes that humanists can help scientists implement equitable and effective solutions to some of the most pressing ecological issues of our time..

“ The humanistic study of extractive industries, and the social histories connected to them, will be key for understanding the challenges presented by the climate crisis.”

B.A. French

Arielle Sidney, a senior majoring in French, designs eco-friendly clothing in her spare time.

Her bold and iconic outfits are often made with recycled shopping bags. on tiktok – where she has over 100,000 followers – she’s shared a jumpsuit made out of target bags, a dress out of ikea bags and even a coat out of trader joe’s bags., she also incorporates other upcycled materials in her designs – from sourcing goodwill curtains to create a paint-splattered ballgown to restructuring a shein bag into a high-quality hot pink purse, she breathes new life into items that might otherwise go into landfills., her sustainable designs made such a splash that she was even featured prominently in a  vogue  article last winter., sidney is currently studying abroad in france, where she continues to dabble in fashion on the side., want to get involved.

The Chair of the UCI Academic Senate convened a new task force, which includes Director of the Environmental Humanities Research Center and Chair of Art History James Nisbet, to make recommendations on how UCI should move forward on issues related to climate change.

For UCI to effectively answer the threat of climate change, we need to know our strengths. Please help us build a database of scholarly activity on climate change happening at UCI by completing a survey  here .

See the humanities in action

Copyright © 2023 UC Regents. All rights reserved.

Privacy Policy

Submission Guidelines

Environmental Humanities publishes articles , provocations , review essays , short commentary pieces , and entries in the Living Lexicon for Environmental Humanities . 

Information on these formats and on how to submit a proposal to the journal is provided below.  All submissions made to the journal should be the original work of the author(s) and should not have been published or be under consideration for publication with another journal or publisher. Some exceptions may be made; please contact the editors to discuss further. All word counts are inclusive of notes and references.

General information on formats

Articles should be 5,000–9,000 words in length. As an interdisciplinary, international journal, we are particularly interested in publishing articles that are both accessible and of interest to a wide audience within the environmental humanities and beyond. Articles are rigorously peer-reviewed following standard academic double-blind procedures.

Provocations should be 5,000–9,000 words in length. This section provides a space for writing that grapples with an important topic in a passionate and insightful way. Often contributions are a little less "academic" in style and are deliberately designed to push scholarship in a particular, often uncomfortable, direction—in short, to provoke. These articles are double-blind peer-reviewed in the standard manner employed by the journal.

Review essays should be 3,000–6,000 words in length. They should offer in-depth discussion of new and/or significant texts in this emerging interdisciplinary field (ideally, 2–3 books or other substantial texts). Review essays should aim to be evaluative but also synthetic and generative, exploring emergent themes or gaps in scholarship and drawing together ideas and conversations to position them within (or in relation to) the broader environmental humanities. Environmental Humanities does not publish single book reviews. Review essays are peer-reviewed following standard academic double-blind procedures.

Commentary pieces should be 1,000–3,000 words in length. The commentary section of the journal is a space for informed discussion of key themes in the environmental humanities, especially as the field is taking shape in the published work in this journal. Contributions are expected to connect to and engage with discussions in this journal and beyond. These pieces are not peer-reviewed but are moderated by the editorial team . Environmental Humanities in Practice articles should be 3,000–5,000 words. This section offers a peer-reviewed space for critical reflection on creative expression in environmental humanities; on artistic, civic, pedagogical and policy practices that inform and/or relate to environmental humanities; and for reflections on and with community practitioners. It acknowledges, presents, and discusses the intellectual and practical engagements with the journal’s interests beyond a narrowly conceived academy. As such, articles in this category should be written in highly accessible language. We particularly encourage submissions from practitioners beyond the academy and from collaborations between academics and other individuals and groups. These articles are double-blind peer-reviewed. Living Lexicon for the Environmental Humanities entries should be roughly 1,000 words in length. These pieces are both scholarly and creative and include personal reflections by authors and experimental musings based on their own research. The Lexicon aims for concise, provocative prose rather than dictionary-style entries. Lexicon entries are peer-reviewed using a standard double-blind process.

Submitting all article types except Commentary

Submissions to Environmental Humanities should be made in the form of a 250-word abstract emailed to the editors at  [email protected] . Abstracts should outline the topic, approach, and conclusions of the article. In addition, review essay abstracts should list the texts to be discussed and note the broader thematic issues to be explored in the essay. All submissions should include a title and full contact details for the author(s) and should be submitted as a Word or RTF file rather than as a PDF or in the body of an email. On the basis of the submitted abstract, the editors will determine whether a full article/essay should be submitted. Turnaround for abstracts will generally be two weeks. If an article/review essay is submitted and deemed to be suitable for publication by the editorial team, it will be refereed following standard double-blind academic peer-review procedures.

Submitting a Commentary piece

Rather than submitting an abstract for a Commentary piece, the article itself should be submitted. As there is no external peer-review process for these pieces, authors do not need to remove identifying features from them. The editorial team will review all Commentary submissions and determine whether they are appropriate for publication in the journal. If so, they will provide editorial feedback. Turnaround for a reply to Commentary pieces will generally be four to six weeks. A full draft of a proposed commentary piece can be emailed to the editors at [email protected] .

Submitting an entry to the Living Lexicon for the Environmental Humanities

To propose a new entry for the Living Lexicon, please send an initial inquiry with the proposed keyword to the Lexicon Editors at [email protected] .

Submitting a special issue or section proposal

The journal is not currently accepting proposals for special issues.

Environmental Humanities frequently publishes collections of articles compiled by guest editors. These special issues or sections include anywhere from three to ten articles and might include contributions in various formats. As a general rule, the journal does not commit to publishing collections with open calls for papers. Instead, we ask guest editors to identify a concrete set of papers and to complete and return a copy of our Special Issue Proposal Form . Decisions about which special issues to publish are made by the journal's Management Committee. While we expect guest editors to play the lead role in editing these collections, two or more members of our permanent editorial team are allocated to each special issue to provide ongoing input and assistance. Special Issue Proposal Forms should be emailed to the editors at [email protected] .

Formatting an initial submission

If a full submission is invited, please observe the following basic formatting guidelines:

Environmental Humanities is published in English with US English spelling conventions. The journal uses The Chicago Manual of Style , 17th edition. Citations should take the form of footnotes , and a full bibliography should be included. Submissions should be formatted in 12-point Times New Roman, left justified, and 1.5 spaced. No indication of the author’s identity or institutional affiliation should be included (so as to facilitate standard blind peer review). Authors should also remove any references to their own work within the text and replace them with "Author" and the year of publication. Headings should be in bold on a separate line but otherwise should be formatted the same as the main text.

Formatting an accepted manuscript

Once an article is given final acceptance for publication, we ask authors to ensure that all formatting conforms to the journal's style guide .

Affiliations

• About Environmental Humanities
• Editorial Board
• For Authors
• Rights and Permissions Inquiry
• Online ISSN 2201-1919
• Print ISSN 2201-1919
• Copyright © 2024
• Duke University Press
• 905 W. Main St. Ste. 18-B
• Durham, NC 27701
• (888) 651-0122
• International
• +1 (919) 688-5134
• Information For
• Advertisers
• Book Authors
• Booksellers/Media
• Journal Authors/Editors
• Journal Subscribers
• Prospective Journals
• Licensing and Subsidiary Rights
• View Open Positions
• email Join our Mailing List
• catalog Current Catalog
• Accessibility
• Get Adobe Reader

This Feature Is Available To Subscribers Only

Sign In or Create an Account