Ahead of Earth Day, ACLS is sharing scholarly resources by and recommend by our fellows and grantees that explore the environmental humanities: the intersection of the environment, climate change, and sustainability with the humanities and interpretive social sciences.
Drawing on humanities and social science disciplines that have brought qualitative analysis to bear on environmental issues, the environmental humanities engages with fundamental questions of meaning, value, responsibility and purpose in a time of rapid, and escalating, change.
“Thinking Through the Environment, Unsettling the Humanities”
These resources are an addition to a growing series, including resource pages on Asian Pacific American heritage , Black history , Disability Studies , LGBTQ+ liberation , and Indigenous studies , that are all a part of our ongoing commitment to and efforts in inclusive excellence and amplifying scholarship in the humanities and interpretive social sciences.
If you have a favorite resource – yours or another’s – related to environmental humanities, please share your contributions with us at [email protected]
Scholarly Resources by ACLS Fellows & Grantees
ARTICLES
“‘Another Education by Stone:’ Archaeological Case Study in Brazil’s Environmental Law” – American Anthropologist , Volume 124, Issue 4, October 23, 2022 Written by Chris N. Lesser F’22, F’20, ACLS Leading Edge Fellow, Sembrando Sentido “Archaeological assessment reveals Earth’s early transformation through land use” – Science, Volume 365, Issue 6456, August 30, 2019 Co-written by Lucas Stephens F’18, Policy Associate for Internet of Water, Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions “Beyond Solar Panels and Priuses: The Overlooked Environmentalism of Latinx Catholics” – the revealer, October 7, 2021 Written by Amanda J. Baugh F’11, Associate Professor, Religious Studies, California State University, Northridge “Birds and Beasts were Many: The Ecology and Climate of the Guanzhong Basin in the Pre-Imperial Period” – Early China , Volume 43, 2020 Written by Brian Lander F’20, F’18, G’16, Assistant Professor of History and Environment and Society, Brown University “Brewing memories, sustaining life in common” – The Center for the Humanities, December 9, 2020 Written by Ángeles Donoso Macaya F’21, Professor of Spanish, Borough of Manhattan Community College/CUNY; Professor of Latin American Culture and Visual Studies, The CUNY Graduate Center “Can Pollution Bring Balance to the Hidden Land? Fiberglass Interventions in the Ecology of Sikkimese Cham” – Copenhagen Journal of Asian Studies, Volume40, Number 2, 2022 Written by Kalzang Dorjee Bhutia F’23, F’19, Visiting Scholar, University of Southern California “Care” – Women’s Studies , Volume 50, Number 8, 2021 Written by Elizabeth Mary DeLoughrey F’12, Professor, English and the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, University of California, Los Angeles “Confronting racism and white privilege in courses on religion and the environment: An inclusive pedagogical approach” – Teaching Theology and Religion, Volume 22, Issue 4, November 17, 2019 Written by Amanda J. Baugh F’11, Associate Professor, Religious Studies, California State University, Northridge “Conrad’s Maw: The Buried Histories of Costaguana” – Victorian Studies Volume 65, Issue 3, Spring 2023 Written by Kyle McAuley F’24, Faculty Fellow, Unterberg Poetry Center, 92nd Street Y “Contamination in Theory and Protest” – American Ethnologist , Volume 00, Number 0, 2021 Written by David Bond G’22, F’12, Associate Director, Center for the Advancement of Public Action (CAPA) and Faculty Member, Environment, Bennington College “Critical Hydrography in the Long Nineteenth Century” – Literature Compass Voume 19, Issue 6, May 2022 Written by Kyle McAuley F’24, Faculty Fellow, Unterberg Poetry Center, 92nd Street Y “The deep Anthropocene” – Aeon , October 1, 2020 Co-written by Lucas Stephens F’18, Policy Associate for Internet of Water, Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions
Contamination offers an intuitive language for our present crisis, one that condenses into felt form so much of the unease, upheaval, and fierce aspiration that enliven our contemporary moment.
David Bond G’22, F’12
“Design Ethnography: A View from an Industrial Think Tank” – Ethnography, Online First, 2022 Written by Stuart Kirsch F’10, Roy A. Rappaport Collegiate Professor of Anthropology, University of Michigan “The Double Force of Vulnerability: Ethnography and Environmental Justice” – Environment and Society: Advances in Research , Volume 12, Issue 1, September 20 21 Co-written by Dana E. Powell F’19, Associate Professor, Anthropology, Appalachian State University “Ecology without Scale: Unthinking the World Zoom” – Animation: An Interdisciplinary Journal , Volume 9, Number 2, 2014 |Written by Christopher K. Tong, F’21, Assistant Professor, University of Maryland, Baltimore County “Ecomusicology, Indigenous Knowledge and Environmental Degradation in Ibadan, Nigeria” – African Music: Journal of the International Library of African Music , Volume 11, Number 1, December 2019 Written by Olusegun Stephen Titus F’20, Senior Lecturer, Department of Music, Obafemi Awolowo University “Environmental and vegetation dynamics in the forest of Orile-Owu, southwest Nigeria, from the last ~ 1,4 k cal yr BP” – Hoehnea, Volume 48, 2021 Co-written by Kingsley C. Daraojimba F’20, Lecturer, Archaeology & Tourism. University of Nigeria, Nsukka “Esperanzas crecientes, negociaciones secas: Las industrias mexicanas y estadounidense del aguacate en la era del Tratado de Libre Comercio y el cambio climático” – Sillares: Revista de Estudios Históricos , October 29, 2022 Written by Viridiana Hernández Fernández F’21, Assistant Professor of History, University of Iowa “‘Exceeding Beringia’: Upending universal human events and wayward transits in Arctic spaces” – Environment and Planning D: Society and Space , Volume 39, Issue 1, 2020 Written by Jen Rose Smith F’22, Assistant Professor, Geography Department, American Indian Studies Program, University of Wisconsin-Madison “From Social Media Space to Sound Space: Protest Songs during Occupy Nigeria Fuel Subsidy Removal” – Muziki: Journal of Music Research in Africa , Volume 14, Issue 2, 2017 Written by Olusegun Stephen Titus F’20, Senior Lecturer, Department of Music, Obafemi Awolowo University “Future Perfect: From the Pandemic to the Paris Climate Agreement” – Anthropological Theory, Volume 23, Issue 2, 2023 Written by Stuart Kirsch F’10, Roy A. Rappaport Collegiate Professor of Anthropology, University of Michigan “George Eliot’s Estuarial Form” – Victorian Literature and Culture , Volume 48, Issue 1, Spring 2020 Written by Kyle McAuley F’24, Faculty Fellow, Unterberg Poetry Center, 92nd Street Y “A History of Pigs in China: From Curious Omnivores to Industrial Pork” – The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 79, Number 4, November 2020 Brian Lander F’20, F’18, G’16, Assistant Professor of History and Environment and Society, Brown University; Katherine Brunson, Assistant Professor of Archaeology, Wesleyan University; and Mindi Schneider, Lecturer in Environment and Society, Brown University “Humans as Waste: Slum Ecology in African Poetry by Douglas Kaze” – ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment , March 20, 2024 Written by Douglas Kaze F’21, Senior Lecturer, Department of English, University of Jos “Imaginative Geographies in Scott and Austen” – The Wordsworth Circle, Volume 52, Issue 3, Summer 2021 Written by Kyle McAuley F’24, Faculty Fellow, Unterberg Poetry Center, 92nd Street Y “Intervals in Relief: Abe Masanao’s Stereoscopic Clouds” – Representations, Issue 159, Summer 2022 Written by Hsin-Yuan Peng F’20, PhD Candidate, Comparative Literature and Film and Media Studies, Yale University “Inundations, boundaries and intersections: floods as narration in Nigerian literature” –Studies in Ecocriticism , Volume 24, Issue 1, April 26, 2020 Written by Douglas Kaze F’21, Senior Lecturer, Department of English, University of Jos “Kinship in the abyss: submerging with The Deep” – Atlantic Studies, 2022 “Labors of Love: People, Dogs, and Affect in North American Arctic Borderlands, 1700-1900” – The Journal of American History , Vol. 108 No. 2, September 2021 Written by Bathsheba Demuth F’15, Dean’s Associate Professor of History & Environment and Society, Brown University “Lethal ‘forever chemicals’ taint our food, water and even blood. The EPA is stalling” – The Guardian , October 24, 2021 Written by David Bond G’22, F’12, Associate Director, Center for the Advancement of Public Action (CAPA) and Faculty Member, Environment, Bennington College “Living with the Mountain: Mountain Propitiation Rituals in the Making of Human-Environmental Ethics in Sikkim” – Journal of Buddhist Ethics , Volume 28, 2021 Written by Kalzang Dorjee Bhutia F’23, F’19, Visiting Scholar, University of Southern California “The March of Empire: The Californian Quest for: Avocados in Early-Twentieth Century Mexico” – Global Food History , October 16, 2023 Written by Viridiana Hernández Fernández F’21, Assistant Professor of History, University of Iowa “Making It Home: Solidarity and Belonging in the #NoDAPL/Standing Rock Encampments” – Collaborative Anthropologies , Volume 13, Number 1, Fall 2020 Co-written by Dana E. Powell F’19, Associate Professor, Anthropology, Appalachian State University “Migrant Labor and A Life Under Fire: A Triptych” – University of California Humanities Research Institute , June 2021 Written by Salvador Zárate F’21, Assistant Professor, Anthropology, University of California, Irvine “Mobility, Race, and Climate in Postwar Atlanta” – American Studies , Volume 60, Issue 3/4, January 1, 2022 Written by Robert Gioielli F’21, Associate Professor of History, University of Cincinnati Blue Ash College “Music and Poetry Representations of Oil Exploration, Honey Bee (Dis)Placement and Endangerment in the Niger Delta of Nigeria” – Bee World , November 23, 2021 Written by Olusegun Stephen Titus F’20, Senior Lecturer, Department of Music, Obafemi Awolowo University “On the Agency of Environmental History” – The Journal of Social History , December 2023 Written by Bathsheba Demuth F’15, Dean’s Associate Professor of History & Environment and Society, Brown University “A Poetics of Climate Change: Apocalyptic Rhetoric in Selected Poems from East Africa” – Transnational Literature, Volume 10, Number 2, 2018 Written by Eve Nabulya F’18, Lecturer, Makerere University Uganda
“Populism and Carbon Tax Justice: The Yellow Vest Movement in France Get access Arrow” – Social Problems , August 18, 2021 Written by Daniel R. Driscoll F’21, Incoming Postdoctoral Research Associate, Brown University, Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs “Resilience after Catastrophe? Five Reflections on ‘Apocalypse Then’” – Edge Effects, February 24, 2015 Written by Michitake Aso F’10, Associate Professor and Undergraduate Director of History, East Asian Studies, State University of New York at Albany “Rethinking Human-Centredness and Eco-Sustainability in an African Setting: Insights from Luganda Folktales” – Journal of African Cultural Studies , 2022 Written by Eve Nabulya F’18, Lecturer, Makerere University Uganda “Scientific Ghostwriting in the Amazon? The Role of Experts in the Lawsuit against Chevron in Ecuador” – Comparative Studies in Society and History, Volume 64, Issue 2, 2022 Written by Stuart Kirsch F’10, Roy A. Rappaport Collegiate Professor of Anthropology, University of Michigan “Submerged Bodies: The Tidalectics of Representability and the Sea in Caribbean Art” – Environmental Humanities , Volume 12, Issue 1, 2020 Co-written by Elizabeth M. DeLoughrey F’12, Professor, Department of English and the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, University of California, Los Angeles “Talanoa Dialogue at UN Climate Change Meetings: The Extraordinary Encompassment of a Scale-Climbing Pacific Speech Genre” – Oceania , Volume 91, Issue 3, September 30, 2021 Written by Stuart Kirsch F’10, Professor of Anthropology, University of Michigan “Towards a Critical Ocean Studies for the Anthropocene” – English Language Notes Volume 57, Issue 1, 2019 Written by Elizabeth M. DeLoughrey F’12, Professor, Department of English and the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, University of California, Los Angeles “Underdeveloped Ecologies: Puerto Rico’s ‘Forest Transition’ and the Cultivation of Colonial Authority” – Journal of Latin American Geography , Volume 20, Issue 5, April 2021 Written by Chris N. Lesser F’22, F’20, ACLS Leading Edge Fellow, Sembrando Sentido “Use of historical mapping to understand sources of soil-lead contamination: Case study of Santa Ana, CA” – Environmental Research , Volume 212, Part D, September 2022 Co-written by Juan Manuel Rubio F’22, ACLS Emerging Voices Fellow, Effron Center for the Study of America / High Meadows Environmental Institute, Princeton University “These Unheralded Workers Are Helping Prevent the Next Wildfire” – SAPIENS Anthropology Magazine, September 15, 2021 Written by Salvador Zárate F’21, Assistant Professor, Anthropology, University of California, Irvine “‘We Have an Obligation to Act as the Custodians’: Environmental Communitarianism in Mbugua’s Different Colours ” – Research in African Literatures , Volume 53, Number 2, Summer 2022 Written by Eve Nabulya F’18, Lecturer, Makerere University Uganda “From Wetland to Farmland: How Humans Transformed the Central Yangzi Basin” – Asia Major, Volume 35, Number 1, 2022 Written by Brian Lander F’20, F’18, G’16, Assistant Professor of History and Environment and Society, Brown University “Why Pacific Islanders Stopped Worrying about the Apocalypse and Started Fighting Climate Change” – American Anthropologist , Volume 122, Number 4, December 2020 Written by Stuart Kirsch F’10, Professor of Anthropology, University of Michigan
BOOKS
Air Conditioning (Bloomsbury 2024) Written by Hsuan L. Hsu F’18, F’12, Professor of English, University of California, Davis Allegories of the Anthropocene (Duke University Press, 2019) Written by Elizabeth M. DeLoughrey F’12, Professor, Department of English and the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, University of California, Los Angeles The Cambridge Companion to Environmental Humanities (Cambridge University Press, 2021)Co-edited by Jeffrey J. Cohen F’11, F’03, Dean of Humanities, Professor of English, The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Arizona State University The Cultivated Forest: People and Woodlands in Asian History (University of Washington Press, 2022) Associate Professor, History, St. John’s University; Bradley Camp Davis F’18, Assistant Professor, History, Eastern Connecticut State University; Brian Lander F’20, F’18, G’16, Assistant Professor of History and Environment and Society, Brown University; and John Lee F’18, Assistant Professor, East Asian History, Durham University Defend the Sacred: Native American Religious Freedom beyond the First Amendment (Princeton University Press, 2020)Written by Michael D. McNally F’21, John M. and Elizabeth W. Musser Professor of Religion, Carleton College Engineering Vulnerability: In Pursuit of Climate Adaptation (Duke University Press, 2022) Environmental Winds: Making the Global in Southwest China (University of California Press, 2013) Written by Michael J. Hathaway F’13, Professor of Anthropology, Simon Fraser University Floating Coast: An Environmental History of the Bering Strait (W.W. Norton 2019) Written by Bathsheba Demuth F’15, Dean’s Associate Professor of History & Environment and Society, Brown University The Fluvial Imagination: On Lesotho’s Water-Export Economy (University of California Press, 2022) Written by Colin Hoag F’20, Assistant Professor, Environmental Anthropology, Smith College Global Ecologies and the Environmental Humanities: Postcolonial Approaches (Routledge, 2015) God and the Green Divide: Religious Environmentalism in Black and White (University of California Press, 2016) Written by Amanda J. Baugh F’11, Associate Professor, Religious Studies, California State University, Northridge Governing the Urban in China and India: Land Grabs, Slum Clearance, and the War on Air Pollution (Princeton University Press 2020) Written by Xuefei Ren F’16, Faculty of Sociology & Global Urban Studies, Michigan State University The King’s Harvest: A Political Ecology of China from the First Farmers to the First Empire (Yale University Press, 2021) Landscapes of Power: Politics of Energy in the Navajo Nation (Duke University Press, 2018)Written by Dana E. Powell F’19, Associate Professor, Anthropology, Appalachian State University Matsutake Worlds (Berghahn Books, 2021) Edited by Michael J. Hathaway F’13, Professor of Anthropology, Simon Fraser University, and Lieba Faier Political Fallout: Nuclear Weapons Testing and the Making of a Global Environmental Crisis (Stanford University Press, 2020) Written by Toshihiro Higuchi F’12, F’10, Associate Professor, History, Georgetown University Routes of Power: Energy and Modern America (Harvard University Press, 2014) Written by Christopher Jones F’17, Associate Professor of History, Arizona State University The Rural Landscapes of Archaic Cyprus: An Archaeology of Environmental and Social Change, by Cambridge (Cambridge University Press, 2023) Written by Catherine Kearns F’19, Assistant Professor of Classics and Committee on Environment, Geography, and Urbanization, University of Chicago Rubber and the Making of Vietnam: An Ecological History, 1897-1975 (University of North Carolina Press, 2018) Written by Michitake Aso F’10, Associate Professor and Undergraduate Director of History, East Asian Studies, State University of New York at Albany The Smell of Risk: Environmental Disparities and Olfactory Aesthetics (New York University Press, 2020)Written by Hsuan Hsu F’18, F’12, Professor of English, University of California Davis Spaceship in the Desert: Energy, Climate Change, and Urban Design in Abu Dhabi (Duke University Press, 2019) Stone: An Ecology of the Inhuman (University of Minnesota Press, 2015)Written by Jeffrey J. Cohen F’11, F’03, Dean of Humanities, Professor of English, The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Arizona State University What a Mushroom Lives For: Matsutake and the Worlds They Make (Princeton University Press, 2022)
BOOK CHAPTERS
“Caring for the Land, Caring for the Dharma: The Environmental History of Buddhism at Pemayangtse Monastery, Sikkim, as a Resource for Contemporary Conservation Initiatives” – Religion and Nature Conservation (Routledge, 2022) Written by Kalzang Dorjee Bhutia F’23, F’19, Visiting Scholar, University of Southern California “A History of Soy in China: From Weedy Bean to Global Commodity” – The Age of the Soybean: An Environmental History of Soy During the Great Acceleration (White Horse Press, 2022) Written by Brian Lander F’20, F’18, G’16, Assistant Professor of History and Environment and Society, Brown University, and Thomas DuBois “Mining the Seas: Speculative Fictions and Futures” Laws of the Sea: Interdisciplinary Currents – (Routledge, 2022) Written by Elizabeth Mary DeLoughrey F’12, Professor, English and the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, University of California, Los Angeles “Offerings from the Rivers to the Mountains: Mist and Fog as Connecting Life Force in the Sikkimese Himalaya” – Storying Multipolar Climes of the Himalaya, Andes and Arctic: Anthropocenic Climate and Shapeshifting Watery Lifeworlds (Routledge, 2023) Written by Kalzang Dorjee Bhutia F’23, F’19, Visiting Scholar, University of Southern California “The Paradox of China’s Sustainability” – Chinese Environmental Humanities: Practices of Environing at the Margins (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019) Written by Christopher K. Tong, F’21, Assistant Professor, University of Maryland, Baltimore County “Sounding the Environmental Benefits of the COVID-19 Pandemic in Southern Nigeria” – Eco-Anxiety and Pandemic Distress: Psychological Perspectives on Resilience and Interconnectedness Get access Arrow (Oxford Academic, 2022) Written by Olusegun Stephen Titus F’20, Senior Lecturer, Department of Music, Obafemi Awolowo University
Lead poisoning is an epidemic that has been ravaging communities of color across the country (and the world) for a hundred years. The story of how it spread to our own backyards has little to do with the individual responsibility of homeowners and parents. This is a story about capitalism, the politics of science, and the subtle (and overt) workings of environmental racism.
Produced by Juan Manuel Rubio F’22
NETWORKS AND RESEARCH GROUPS
Vcologies Vcologies is an interdisciplinary, international collective of scholars committed to the environmental humanities, the energy humanities, and other ecology-focused approaches. Shared by Kyle McAuley F’24, Faculty Fellow, Unterberg Poetry Center, 92nd Street Y
PODCASTS
Air, Metal, and Earth seriesProduced by Juan Manuel Rubio F’22, ACLS Emerging Voices Fellow, Effron Center for the Study of America / High Meadows Environmental Institute, Princeton University Data Dialogues seriesDirected and Narrated by Madhuri Karak F’19, Science Communications Fellow, Open Environmental Data Project “Hsuan L. Hsu, ‘The Smell of Risk: Environmental Disparities and Olfactory Aesthetics'” – New Books Network , November 2, 2021 Features Interview with Hsuan Hsu F’18, F’12, Professor of English, University of California Davis “The King’s Harvest” – New Books Network , February 15, 2023 Interview with Brian Lander F’20, F’18, G’16, Assistant Professor of History and Environment and Society, Brown University “Music and Environmental Justice in Nigeria” – Public Lands Podcast, February 21, 2022 Features interview with Olusegun Stephen Titus F’20, Senior Lecturer, Department of Music, Obafemi Awolowo University “Religion and Climate Change” – The Revealer Podcast , Episode 18, October 7, 2021 Features interview with Amanda J. Baugh F’11, Associate Professor, Religious Studies, California State University, Northridge “The State and the Environmental History of Early China” – Tides of History Podcast , January 4, 2024 Interview with Brian Lander F’20, F’18, G’16, Assistant Professor of History and Environment and Society, Brown University
VIDEOS
Religion and Climate Change Webinar – Hosted by the Center for the Study of Religion and American CultureFeatured panelist Amanda J. Baugh F’11, Associate Professor, Religious Studies, California State University, Northridge
WEBSITES AND ONLINE EXHIBITSScholarly Resources Recommended by ACLS Fellows
BOOKS
Aeropolis: Queering Air in Toxicpolluted Worlds (Columbia University Press, 2023) Written by Nerea Calvillo; Recommended by Toshihiro Higuchi F’12, F’10 Eco-critical literature: regreening African landscapes (African Books Collective, 2013)Edited by Ogaga Okuyade; Recommended by Eve Nabulya F’18, Lecturer, Makerere University Uganda Empire and Environment: Ecological Ruin in the Transpacific (University of Michigan Press, 2022) Edited by Jeffrey Santa Ana, Heidi Amin-Hong, Rina Garcia Chua, Xiaojing Zhou; Recommended by Toshihiro Higuchi F’12, F’10 How the Earth Feels: Geological Fantasy in the Nineteenth-Century United States (Duke University Press, 2024) Written by Dana Luciano; Recommended by Toshihiro Higuchi F’12, F’10 Intoxicated: Race, Disability, and Chemical Intimacy Across Empire (Duke University Press, 2023) Written by Mel Chen; Recommended by Toshihiro Higuchi F’12, F’10 Material ecocriticism (Indiana University Press, 2014)Edited by Serenella Iovino and Serpil Oppermann; Recommended by Eve Nabulya F’18, Lecturer, Makerere University Uganda Naturalizing Africa: Ecological Violence, Agency, and Postcolonial Resistance in African Literature (Cambridge University Press, 2018)Written by Cajetan Nwabueze Iheka; Recommended by Eve Nabulya F’18, Lecturer, Makerere University Uganda Postcolonial ecocriticism: Literature, animals, environment (Routledge, 2015)Written by Graham Huggan and Helen Tiffin; Recommended by Eve Nabulya F’18, Lecturer, Makerere University Uganda
