Environmental Humanities

What is Environmental Humanities?

The Environmental Humanities (EH) is not only an interdisciplinary framework; it is perhaps best defined as a meta-discipline or an integrative practice. That is, it does not merely add another/other disciplinary perspective, it interrogates the intellectual assumptions, political motivations, and ethical considerations that have siloed disciplines from research areas that now appear to be squarely within the natural and hard sciences. Through histories of science such as those of geology, weather prediction and others, EH reminds us that the natural sciences themselves originate in humanistic enquiry. In its decolonial formulations, the EH challenges the instrumentalization of science by western epistemological systems, and the co-optation of sustainability discourses by STEM disciplines, corporations, and green-washed capitalism. It critiques the sustainability status quo and orients sustainability towards environmental, gender, multi-generational, and multi-species justice considerations, offering the vibrant potentials that may arise from a radical reconceptualization of the good life.

The Environmental Humanities emerged partly as a critique of how modernity organized knowledge — separating the sciences from the humanities, the social from the ecological. It thus operates at the level of epistemology, asking how we know as much as what we know, and questioning the colonial origins of such epistemological practices. This is why, some of the earliest anti-colonial intellectuals, such as Frantz Fanon, were already speaking in environmental terms, well before climate change and the Anthropocene came to be the intellectual and moral clarion calls that they are today. Questions of environmental harm, disposability of cultures and ways of life through exploitation and extraction were first and foremost anti-colonial in origin. 

Environmental Humanities Initiative

The UMass Amherst EH Collaborative began in earnest in Spring 2020. The co-leads from the Department of English (Malcolm Sen) and Women Gender and Social Studies (Kiran Asher and Banu Subramaniam), all shared the urgent need of decolonial methods to shape climate action and sustainability discourses. Those concerns became alarmingly obvious as the Covid-19 crisis unfolded around the world. Other units, such as the Department of History (David Glassberg), Department of Anthropology (Boone Shear) and the then Department of Geography (Eve Vogel) were active participants in those early seminars and zoom lectures.

Simultaneously, The Renaissance of the Earth project was launched at the Kinney Center for Interdisciplinary Renaissance Studies, bringing together students and researchers across the humanities and sciences to explore what we can learn by engaging the early modern past with questions about our environmental future.

Today, with active collaboration from multiple HFA and STEM faculty, EH witnesses a curricular expansion and greater campus vitality, attracting stellar undergraduate and graduate students each passing year. Strategic partners in this journey have included Centers such as the Kinney Center for Interdisciplinary Renaissance Studies (through the leadership of Marjorie Rubright), the Department of Art and Architecture (through the engagement of Meg Vickery and Sandy Litchfield), the School of Earth and Sustainability (through the leadership of Rob DeConto, and the participation of Eve Vogel, Julie Bringham-Grette, and others), Natural Resource Conservation (Lena Fletcher), and the School of Public Policy (through the participation of Thad Miller). EH scholars from HFA have won campus-level undergraduate sustainability awards, 3M competitions, and some of them are now actively working in the sustainability sector in Massachusetts. Our students have also been active in the historical and permaculture gardens on campus, and their work has been showcased in campus studios and galleries and has won them prestigious Chancellor’s awards. 

View Faculty and Student Projects related to EH. 

Specialization in English

In addition, we offer an undergraduate Specialization in Environmental Humanities for students majoring in English. Students who earn this specialization have a comprehensive understanding of the roles of capital, culture, and politics at a time of rapid climate change. They engage with literature and other arts from across the globe, and also gain a firm understanding of the socio-cultural and environmental dimensions of the climate crisis.

If you are not an English major but would like to pursue this specialization, please reach out to @email.

Sustainability Initiatives

Environmental Humanities faculty are involved in a number of key sustainability initiatives on campus such as the Sustainability Strategy Working Group, Sustainable Ewe Mass, Carbon Zero, and Paperbark magazine. They regularly take part in campus-wide interdisciplinary research collectives such as the Climate Research Group of the Institute for Diversity Sciences and the Anthropocene Lab, and campus-wide transdisciplinary projects and exhibitions such as The Futuring Lab and The Renaissance of the Earth.

Each year, the English Department works closely with the School of Earth and Sustainability to host the much-admired Art Sustainability Activism series of events.