The incubator, funded by the Mellon Foundation, supports faculty developing EH courses.
By Cara Nixon
July 31, 2024
How can sounds and music speak to environmental and social justice? What values does our environment encode, and why? How are energy systems shaped by power struggles across class, race, and geography?
These are just a few questions faculty seek to answer through the curricula they’re developing for the Environmental Humanities initiative this summer, as part of an incubator project funded by the Mellon Foundation. This cohort marks the second in a series, adding six new faculty to the program: Tarık Nejat Dinç [anthropology 2023—], Juniper Harrower [art 2023—], Morgan Luker [music 2010—], Fathimath Musthaq [political science 2021—], Meg Scharle [philosophy and humanities 2003—], and Simone Waller [English and humanities 2020—]. As of fall 2024, 14 faculty members across 10 different departments will be researching and teaching courses developed through the incubator to engage with questions of environmental justice in arts and humanities disciplines.
ºìÌÒÊÓƵ was awarded the $500,000 Mellon grant in early 2023 to support new scholarship in the environmental humanities, develop new models of interdisciplinary teaching, and create a cluster of courses focused on environmental justice and the literary imagination. To enhance ºìÌÒÊÓƵ’s Environmental Studies and Humanities programs, the initiative encourages engagement with environmental humanities, joining other schools building such programs with the help of Mellon, including the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of Pennsylvania. The project will last three and a half years at ºìÌÒÊÓƵ, and is led by principal investigator Sarah Wagner-McCoy [English and humanities 2011—] and co-principal investigator Kristin Scheible [religion and humanities 2014—].
Environmentally-focused subfields in the humanities began to take shape in the 1970s, but the field of environmental humanities has been rapidly growing in recent years as society continues to face existential questions about the climate crisis, social justice, and the connections between the two. The discipline seeks to link diverse fields of study to questions of social and environmental justice.
Part of the Mellon grant is used for the summer incubators. Chosen faculty are awarded $5,000 stipends to develop new or substantially redesigned EH courses to teach during the academic year, and an additional $1,000 stipend after the course is taught to encourage participation in subsequent incubators and mentorship. Cohorts read and discuss recent criticism and theory, share teaching and research materials in progress, and meet invited scholars and leaders in EH. Two sessions including workshops, seminars, and guest speaker-mentors bookend the summer, and meetings are held throughout for faculty to discuss their work and hear from other experts in the field. The incubators allow faculty to connect across disciplines, and though they work on their individual projects and syllabi, they come together to read common texts, share ideas, and give each other feedback.
This year’s cohort already met in late May for the first part of the incubator. The group participated in workshops, set goals for the summer, and connected with the session’s speaker-mentor, Stacy Alaimo, a professor of environmental humanities who visited from the University of Oregon.
Kristin says last summer’s incubator was wildly successful. Incubated courses that came out of last year’s session varied, displaying the unique concepts which can come from exploring cross-disciplinary questions and ideas. Classes covered the histories and varieties of cultural expression of Arctic and sub-Arctic regions; the aesthetics of haunting in postcolonial novels; the twentieth-century rise of Irish theater and Irish nationalism centered around the idea of rural life; what “nature” means in modern America; and the idea of the “whole earth” and how the image of it has been used throughout history.
This year’s incubator has been just as promising, Kristin says. “It's like throwing gems into a kaleidoscope,” she explains, “and you get this gorgeous picture—everything comes together, it's stunning and scintillating, and all the colors bounce off each other in vibrant ways. Then you switch it, and you kind of don't want to give that one up, but it's just as beautiful.”
This second cohort will expand the disciplines represented in EH, developing new courses on topics ranging from whale oil to gold mines to Joshua trees. The group will meet again at the end of the summer to discuss and share the courses they’ve developed and their drafted syllabi. Next year, a third cohort of faculty will be chosen to develop curricula for EH over the summer.
Kristin and Sarah are excited by the possibilities these incubators can create for the EH initiative. For one, they say the new courses satiate a desire from students for such curricula, as EH is a separate and different program from the Environmental Studies and Humanities departments at ºìÌÒÊÓƵ. “It's really strengthening what we already have going on,” Kristin explains. “It's giving students an outlet where their passions can land.”
The other benefit is for the faculty, since the project supports a wide range of disciplines and ideas while centering network and relationship building. “We need to work together to create a more connected learning environment and ground that learning and connection,” Sarah says. During both summers, Sarah and Kristin have hosted Community Breakfasts as part of the incubators, where faculty and staff committed to sustainability and environmental justice can meet to discuss the learning environment they’re working to create at ºìÌÒÊÓƵ.
The stipends allow for concerted time to be dedicated to developing curricula and connecting with fellow incubatees. Perhaps most importantly, the group model can be inspiring for faculty and subsequently benefit students. “When we get together in our incubator, I feel so alive, and I feel like what I’m studying matters,” Kristin says. “I find ways of making my work relevant, not just to me, but to my students, to the world.”
