Applying the Environmental Humanities

Abstract

Environmental issues require answers from science, society, and culture. How can we apply the humanities and arts to these issues while cultivating methodologies that value context-dependence, multiperspectivity, relativism, and subjectivity?

Imaginative Ecologies: Inspiring Change through the Humanities

“…That is why this book tries to show that the response to the ecological crisis expressed in the multiplicity of phenomena that haunt the future of planet Earth-global warming, water pollution, deforestation, biodiversity loss, etc.-does not necessarily have to come exclusively from the sciences, which always seem to opt for a detached, rational comprehension of the pressing questions of today's world. It can also arise from collaboration between arts and sciences, a methodology that, as it has already been acknowledged (Kueffer, Lässer, and Hall 2017;Kueffer et al 2018), characterizes what has come to be known as environmental humanities. For this reason, this book gives voice to the practice of intellectuals, writers and artists from different nationalities who see themselves as participants of a global conversation on the role literature and the arts can play as facilitators of the type of social and cultural change needed in what Steffen, Crutzen and McNeill (2005) refer to as Stage 3 of the Anthropocene, a stage in which we can either continue doing business as usual or become the solution (619).…”

Travelling with Darwin and Humboldt. A Transdisciplinary Educational Experience

“…This is an interdisciplinary area of research inside the Humanities that has grown in the last decades, with many environmental sub-disciplines like Environmental Literature, Environmental Philosophy, Environmental History or Environmental Anthropology. It is clear that responses to environmental problems are primarily social and cultural issues (Kueffer, Forêt, Hall, Wiedmer, 2018) and a change in our ways of thinking is needed. It has also been demonstrated that environmental literature can be used as a didactic resource to raise awareness about environmental and sustainability problems (Martín-Ezpeleta, Echegoyen-Sanz, 2017, 2018).…”